


When Will I See You Again

by hollycomb



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Past Lives, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-18
Updated: 2013-05-17
Packaged: 2017-12-12 04:34:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 31,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/807277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollycomb/pseuds/hollycomb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a fight with Sulu during shore leave, Chekov meets an alien who offers to show him glimpses of his past lives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

They've had disagreements at work before, and sometimes these make for tense evenings in their quarters, but Pavel can usually diffuse the situation by placing his chin on Hikaru's shoulder and pouting a little. If Hikaru is the one who was out of line he'll make it up to Pavel by rubbing his back with strong, soothing hands, until Pavel can't even remember why he was mad. Having time to cool down as the rest of their shift plays out helps. By the time they're alone together they're just annoyed, not livid.   
  
On shore leave, things are different. They've never used their free time to fight before, but they've been together for four years now, and maybe they were due. It started when Pavel grudgingly agreed to go on a hike with Hikaru, who promised that he just wanted to take Pavel to a particular peak with a beautiful view of this planet's jungles. Pavel envisioned an afternoon of light-headed, high altitude sex, both of them wrapped into the blanket he'd tucked inside his pack, but by the time they made it to the peak Hikaru had meticulously collected no less than twenty-three samples of local flora, and Pavel was in no mood to even hold his hand. They fought all the way back down the mountain, Hikaru throwing out his arms and saying he'd never have another chance to visit this planet, Pavel telling him he would have happily just stayed at the hotel if he knew Hikaru was going to spend the whole day working. Back at the hotel, Pavel retaliated by mapping out a star chart for the entire evening, and Hikaru pretended not to care, seething in the corner as he cataloged his specimens. It turned into a competition, like so many things between them seem to lately, and neither of them would get into bed, even when their eyes were falling shut, Pavel cursing and rubbing his eraser over his miscalculations and Hikaru cutting himself on a glass slide.   
  
When they finally caved -- Pavel first, because he knew Hikaru would sleep with his head on the desk before he gave in -- there was some not-quite-makeup sex, which felt more like a wrestling match at moments. Hikaru pinned Pavel and lifted his legs up to fuck him hard and deep, grunting with every thrust, hands like shackles around Pavel's ankles. Pavel flipped Hikaru and shoved him down, riding him until Hikaru lost control and came with an angry groan. Feeling victorious, Pavel soon followed, spraying his come all over Hikaru's chest. They kissed afterward, but not for long, and Hikaru rolled away from Pavel to nurse his wounded pride. There was a time when Pavel always came first, and then again, and again, and Hikaru would be unable to hide his boastful smile as Pavel cried with exhaustion beneath him. Pavel resents him, now, for liking that so much.  
  
In the morning, Pavel wakes up after Hikaru, as usual, and winces at the sunlight through the curtains. Hikaru has the wall-mounted data screen playing a news story about the Klingon brewing festival, and Pavel holds his pillow over his head, groaning.  
  
"It's almost ten," Hikaru says.   
  
"So?" Pavel kicks at him. "We're on vacation."  
  
"Don't kick me."  
  
"I barely touched you! Don't be such a baby."  
  
"God." Hikaru moans and turns the volume on the data screen down. "Fine. I'm hungry. Should I just go to breakfast without you?"   
  
"Do whatever you want. The food on this planet is not good at all. You only wanted to come here for those plants."   
  
"Like we've never indulged your hobbies on shore leave."  
  
"When, when have we done this?" Pavel asks, suddenly wide awake as he throws the pillow away and sits up, glaring at Hikaru, who just stares at the data screen.   
  
"Ha, you can't think of one example!" Pavel says.  
  
"Yes, I can!" Hikaru narrows his eyes at the screen. "How about when we went to Russia?"  
  
"Oh, to meet my family? I'm so sorry I put you through such an ordeal for the sake of my interests, Hikaru."  
  
"Well, you ignored me half the time, speaking Russian to everybody --"  
  
"I'm sorry my family didn't learn Standard to better accommodate you."   
  
"That's not what I mean! Half the time it was like I wasn't even there --"  
  
"I see you every day, I see them not for five years when we go there --"  
  
"God, okay!" Hikaru holds up his hand, wincing. "I can't fucking stand hearing your broken Standard when you get upset, it sounds so affected."  
  
That's what sends Pavel out of the room, not because the accusation actually has merit and therefore stings very badly, but because Hikaru used to love it when Pavel's accent thickened, or when he lost his words. He used to think it was adorable, the blush that spread over Pavel's cheeks when he struggled to say the right thing, and in bed he would moan when Pavel lapsed into Russian as the feeling of Hikaru inside him stripped him of everything but instinct.   
  
"Where are you going?" Hikaru mutters as Pavel begins to dress.  
  
"Nowhere. Don't follow me."  
  
"Pavel, God, don't wander off, you remember what happened on Laraysus --"  
  
"How dare you bring that up!" Pavel says, blushing when he realizes he just shouted that in Russian. Hikaru rolls his eyes and slaps his hands against his knees.  
  
"Fine, curse me in a language I can't even understand, so I can't defend myself, that's fair."   
  
"Fair?" Pavel shouts, back to Standard. "Fair? It is fair to bring up something that happened to me on shore leave when I was seventeen, still a child --"  
  
"It's not the only time you've wandered off on an alien planet without thinking --"  
  
"It was not my fault that we were not briefed on the planet's slave trade policies! They had not made them known to the Federation --"  
  
"Yeah, well, there's a lot of alien culture that isn't _made known_ to the Federation, that's why you shouldn't --"  
  
"Don't tell me what to do!" Pavel shouts, in Russian, because he doesn't want Hikaru to hear how childish he sounds. He storms out of the room, angry tears burning at the corners of his eyes. It's just like Hikaru to bring up Laraysus, as if that disaster is representative of the way Pavel typically conducts himself. He was only curious about their marketplace, so full of wonder for the first alien planet he'd set foot on that he didn't notice that there were no other humans wandering among the stalls. He'd gotten himself kidnapped and locked up, and it was only because Hikaru was virtually stalking him that he was rescued. Of course, it hadn't felt that way at the time. When Hikaru rescued Pavel from the slavers and pulled him into his arms -- but that was a long time ago.  
  
Pavel walks through the streets of the village that surrounds the hotel, not sure what he's looking for. Hikaru has planted that horrible memory in his mind and now he feels nervous, though there are plenty of humans around, including some of his crew members, who he nods to curtly as he passes. He thinks about getting something to eat, but has no appetite, and doesn't like to eat alien food without a chaperone, without Hikaru. Maybe he's become too dependent on Hikaru, who got to Pavel when Pavel was only seventeen, and after that horrible incident on Laraysus, when Pavel just wanted to be protected, hidden in Hikaru's arms at the end of the day. Now Pavel is older, more sure of himself, and maybe he should have his own life, without Hikaru always hovering around, getting his feelings hurt when Pavel outlasts him in bed.  
  
"You've got a trail of ghosts behind that stretches for ten blocks!" someone shouts at him suddenly, and Pavel stops to look down at a stout little native of this planet stares up at him with what looks like a smile. The aliens who live here are purplish and toad-like, intelligent but not particularly advanced.   
  
"I'm sorry?" Pavel says. He heard something about ghosts. He isn't sure what their cultural significance is here, or if the word has some colloquial meaning.   
  
"Don't be sorry!" The alien grabs his wrist. Her palm is course and dry. "It's fantastic! Do you want to meet them?"  
  
"I -- do I want to meet who?"  
  
"Your ghosts! I've never seen someone with so many. There must be some reason you've been hanging on to your corporal form for so long. Come in and find out! I won't even charge you."  
  
Pavel allows her to drag him into a nearby hut, which is dark and fragrant with herbs that Hikaru would surely want to catalog if he were here. The hut only seems to have one room, which is piled with flat pillows that seem clean enough, herbs burning in ceremonial pottery all along the circular wall. Pavel is a little nervous, but the street outside is crowded and he can see sunlight through the cracks in the wooden planks that construct the hut, so how dangerous could this really be? In the end, he sits on the cushion the alien motions to just because he doesn't know how else he'll spend his time while avoiding Hikaru.   
  
"Good, good!" she says cheerfully, bustling around in a wicker cabinet, gathering ingredients. There is an ornate, empty bowl in front of the cushion where Pavel is sitting, in the center of the room. The alien begins mixing things in it, and Pavel sighs, feeling detached from whatever is happening.  
  
"Are you planning on drugging me?" he asks. That would show Hikaru for teasing Pavel about what happened when he was seventeen. Pavel sits with his arms folded tightly over his chest and fantasizes about Hikaru learning of Pavel's poisoning and weeping with regret over Pavel's corpse. For some reason this is a satisfying image.  
  
"Drugging you, yes!" the alien says. She smiles up at Pavel. "So that we can both know your past lives, solve this mystery!"  
  
"Past lives?" Pavel has heard about this, a feature of many alien cultures' spiritual beliefs, and plenty of ancient human beliefs as well.  
  
"Yes, past lives! They are all here with you now, but they can't speak until you drink this. It will make you remember, and they will talk to me."  
  
She offers Pavel the bowl, where crumbled leaves and bits of flower petals are floating in some kind of murky liquid that smells like very strong peppermint. Pavel makes a face and gives the woman an uncertain look.  
  
"Please, drink this!" Her cheerful demeanor is oddly comforting. "I would never hurt an officer of the Federation! That would bring much trouble for me. I have a license in interpreting for ghosts if you would like to see it."  
  
"No, no." Pavel drinks the stuff down, too depressed about what's happening with Hikaru to care about how recklessly he's behaving, or about how he's probably only proving Hikaru right. He winces as he gets the last of it down his throat, and the alien claps happily. She takes the bowl away and replaces it with a cushion, where she sits down with a huff, folding her legs under her skirts.  
  
"Now what?" Pavel says. He feels like he drank strong tea on an empty stomach, the concoction swirling around uncomfortably inside him.   
  
"Just relax, close your eyes!" the alien says. "You may lie down if you like." She gestures to the surrounding cushions. Pavel shakes his head, but then he begins to feel very heavy, and his neck and chest suddenly seem to be made of rubber, unable to support him in a sitting position. He moans irritably and leans down onto the cushions beside the one he's sitting on, then curls up there, feeling sleepy and peaceful and kind of like he's dying.  
  
Images move behind his eyes, blurry and shapeless but somehow conveying feelings, or maybe memories. He fights for consciousness only for a moment, following the sensations that flood him down into a deeper dark, as if chasing a rabbit down a hole.   
  
The first thing he recognizes as distinct among the others is Hikaru. They're together in the snow, running. This was sometime during the war. Pavel enlisted in the Russian army when he was sixteen. His older brothers were all dead. He got separated from his battalion at Mukden and was alone until Hikaru appeared out of the driving white snow and took Pavel to a cave where it seemed that Hikaru had been staying for some time. Pavel never learned Hikaru's name. He just knows, looking back now, that it's Hikaru.   
  
At first, Pavel thought Hikaru was one of the Manchurians, and by the time he recognized the Japanese uniform it was too late. Hikaru had captured him.   
  
Pavel is always waiting for Hikaru's battalion to return to the outpost where Hikaru was left by the others, but days pass and no one comes. Pavel isn't sure what it means to be the prisoner of one man instead of an army. He's been told that the Japanese don't take prisoners, and as time goes on he begins to wonder if that is even what he is to this man with frozen black eyebrows under his little blue cap. Pavel is surprised that Hikaru hasn't stolen his hat, which is warmer, lined with fur. Hikaru builds fires and cooks pots of rice, his supply dwindling. He eats half the pot and then gives the rest to Pavel. He's always talking, Pavel recognizing none of his words but nodding along with him to keep him happy, to keep himself alive. He thinks Hikaru must be insane from the isolation and wonders what he was posted here to wait for. He wonders who is winning, Russia or Japan, far away from here or maybe closer than they realize.  
  
They sleep against the wall of the cave, near the fire, wrapped together out of necessity. Pavel sometimes stays awake and considers the smell of Hikaru's skin, which is different from anything he's ever been this close to. It's delicate, like the rice he cooks, but strong, too, stronger than the snow that threatens them everyday. Pavel wonders what his parents would think if they knew he was sleeping in the arms of a Japanese soldier. Only to survive the cold, he would tell them if they were here. But Pavel is so disoriented and out of his depth that he often thinks of Hikaru not as a Japanese soldier but as a fairy tale creature who has appeared in the blinding white of the snow to rescue him. He grew up hearing stories like this one; they always involved a war raging in the distance. He wakes up every morning feeling as if he's wandered into one of his mama's stories, the blank white landscape unchanging outside the cave, Hikaru's teeth chattering as he greedily presses his face to Pavel's neck for warmth. Pavel doesn't push him away. He's cold, too.  
  
They spend their days scavenging for food, keeping close to the cave so that they don't lose it. If they come upon anything visible in the snow, Hikaru will point and say a Japanese word, and Pavel will answer with Russian. They smile at each other, understanding nothing, but grateful for the excuse to use their voices. Pavel had never seen a Japanese person up close before Hikaru. Sometimes he stares at him, and Hikaru doesn't seem to notice, staring back at Pavel just as curiously. One day, when they return to the cave with brittle branches for kindling, Pavel kneels down beside Hikaru as he breaks the branches apart and rubs the frost from Hikaru's dark eyebrows with his thumbs. Hikaru gives Pavel a soft, questioning look, then says something that seems to express gratitude before wiping at the corner of Pavel's lips with his thumb, as if there's some dirt there that has been bothering Hikaru for days.  
  
As the supply of rice shrinks, Hikaru begins to eat less before passing the pot to Pavel, who tries to pass it back, but Hikaru frowns and refuses it. He has some other supplies: dried fish that are frozen solid and dried mushrooms that taste even worse than the fish does. Pavel wants to wander further from the cave to try to find a frozen stream for fishing, but he knows it's dangerous, and every time he tries to widen their scavenging route Hikaru grabs him by the arm and pulls him back. It's irritating at times, but the look on Hikaru's face when he reclaims Pavel is so desperate and afraid that Pavel can't be mad for long, even if they'll likely starve because of Hikaru's reluctance to lose his way back to the cave, or to lose Pavel when he ventures too far.  
  
When darkness falls they go quickly to Hikaru's blankets, the fire raging by then, their only defense against the bone-snapping cold that comes when the sun is gone. Hikaru has a good supply of wood deep in the cave, something he must have amassed in preparation for the winter. So he's been here for months, going mad with loneliness. Pavel pities him, and doesn't stop Hikaru from whispering Japanese words against his lips when they're huddled under the blankets together, Hikaru's eyes trained on Pavel's in the flickering firelight, pleading for understanding. Pavel is hardly surprised when Hikaru pushes his warm tongue between Pavel's lips one night, his hat going askew as he licks hungrily into the heat of Pavel's mouth, breathing hard. Pavel finds Hikaru's hand under the blankets and squeezes, telling him that it's okay to be crazy, to do crazy things. Pavel didn't want to fight in this war, and he doubts that Hikaru volunteered to be left in a cave while the others moved on. To hell with everyone but the two of them. They're going to die alone here, anyway. Hikaru can do whatever he likes.  
  
Their days become strangely exhilarating once they begin to test each other's limits, and Pavel wonders if this is what all people who are stranded together eventually fall to, but when he's beneath the blankets with Hikaru it feels like more than desperation, almost like some kind of blessing. Hikaru's mouth is the only thing left in the world that is hot enough to warm him; even the heat from the fire doesn't feel this good against Pavel's numb skin. He moans when Hikaru kisses his neck, and hisses when Hikaru's cold hands sneak under his clothes. Pavel unbuttons Hikaru's uniform and feels his way over Hikaru's chest and back, his hands warming quickly. They stare into each other's eyes, breathless, nodding, finally speaking the same language.   
  
"I love you, I want to marry you," Pavel babbles madly when Hikaru finally reaches between his legs one night, his fingers closing around the heat of Pavel's hardness. "Make me your wife," Pavel whispers into Hikaru's mouth, bucking his hips, laughing at himself. Hikaru smiles, his lips shaking, and when his thumb rubs in quick circles over the wetness that has been gathering in Pavel's underwear every night since they started touching each other, Pavel's whole body tenses and he screams with the kind of release he thought he would never know again, clutching at Hikaru, crying against his neck.   
  
"Yes, yes, yes," Pavel whispers. "Now let me seal myself to you, too." He swallows heavily and rubs his face against Hikaru's while he strokes him, watching Hikaru's eyelids grow heavier and heavier as he fights to keep them open, to keep his eyes locked on Pavel's. Hikaru shudders and cries out when he comes, and Pavel wraps him tightly into his arms, moaning happily, draping a leg over Hikaru's side, getting him as close as he can.   
  
"See, now we are married," Pavel whispers into the dark as Hikaru breathes in helpless huffs against his collar. "Like in the old stories, when a young girl marries a bear because he kept her warm when she was freezing. She loves the bear and he turns into a prince because of her love. You're already a prince, lucky for me. Maybe you were a bear until you saw me."  
  
They kiss for a long time, not wanting to lose the heat of it, or the connection they have now that they've touched each other's most secret places. Pavel wants to touch Hikaru everywhere, wants to see him naked and stretched out on a bed, warm and relaxed, and he dreams about this when he finally falls asleep with Hikaru wrapped around him. He dreams that he's kneeling over Hikaru's lap in a hot spring, steam fogging the air as they kiss, grinding their bodies together, the stiff nipples Pavel felt under Hikaru's shirt rubbing against Pavel's, making him moan. He wakes up with more come in his pants.  
  
Hikaru tries not to let Pavel see the paltry amount of rice that remains. Pavel isn't sure why Hikaru feels that he needs to protect him from the knowledge of their quickly approaching starvation, but he pretends not to notice, and refuses when Hikaru continues to try and give him the majority of the rice in the pot.   
  
"I don't want to outlive you!" Pavel says, frowning as he pushes it back into Hikaru's hands. "Don't be cruel."   
  
Hikaru persists, and eventually Pavel sighs and accepts his fate. Hikaru has been kind enough to share his rice with Pavel, so perhaps he does deserve to die first and leave Pavel to try in vain to draw warmth from his frozen corpse. With this on his mind, Pavel shoots a falcon the following morning, and as Hikaru helps him pluck its feathers back at the cave they both cry with joy and babble in their respective languages, their empty stomachs lurching painfully with hope. Hikaru leans over the bird to kiss Pavel a hundred times as they work, and Pavel knows that he's proud of him.  
  
On the night that they eat the falcon, Hikaru climbs on top of Pavel under the blankets, and Pavel moans with gratitude, so incredibly warm under Hikaru's weight. Hikaru holds Pavel's face and kisses him, whispering in Japanese, and Pavel chokes out tears when he imagines what Hikaru is saying, that Pavel is his clever little wife, that Hikaru will keep Pavel alive until spring with his heavy body, that he'll turn back into a bear if he needs to, just to keep Pavel warm like this.  
  
He reaches between Pavel's legs, but only strokes him a few times before moving lower. It feels good, and Pavel opens his legs wider; Hikaru is his honored husband and he can touch Pavel wherever he likes. When Hikaru puts two of his fingers in his mouth and sucks, Pavel thinks he must just want a last taste of the falcon, never expecting those wet fingers to push inside him. He shouts and Hikaru quiets him, kissing, pressing into him gently. Pavel sobs and holds Hikaru's arms, bucking away from his fingers and then back onto them, moaning as the feeling changes, flushing through him like hot water, like pale fire.   
  
Hikaru makes himself as wet as he can before pushing in, but it still burns terribly, and Pavel cries, kissing Hikaru with shaking lips as he's opened, their bodies locking together, uncomfortably at first. Hikaru whispers reassurances, and Pavel shuts his eyes, feeling as if he can translate, the words floating across the backs of his eyelids in Russian: _Calm yourself, calm yourself, you will understand soon_. Pavel nods and sighs wetly, wrapping his legs around Hikaru's back, inside his uniform jacket. Hikaru begins to move, and Pavel moans, forgetting the cave and the snow and everything, only knowing that Hikaru is inside him, setting the whole world on fire, the burn sinking lower and lower until Pavel pushes down to meet Hikaru's thrusts, grunting, nodding, understanding. He comes from the rub of Hikaru's rough uniform on his cock, and Hikaru shouts out as Pavel's body squeezes up tightly around him. When Hikaru quivers helplessly on top of him, mumbling warm words against Pavel's cheek, Pavel knows that he's come, too, and he captures Hikaru's mouth, moaning at the thought that Hikaru has emptied himself deep inside him.  
  
They sleep like stones that night, their trousers still unfastened under the blankets, Hikaru's soft cock nestled against Pavel's bare ass. In the morning Pavel wakes to the feeling of Hikaru tucking him back into his trousers and buttoning them up for him, reaching around Pavel's side to do it. Hikaru kisses Pavel's neck when he sees that he's awake and gives him a little pat over the bundle of his cock, which Hikaru has put away for him. Pavel smiles against the sleeve of Hikaru's uniform, squirming back against him.  
  
They find no more falcons. The snow keeps falling, nearly closing up the mouth of the cave, which they have to dig out every few hours to keep from being swallowed up by the earth. Pavel has nightmares and wakes up to Hikaru's soothing, but he doesn't believe the promises that he knows Hikaru is making: that things will be okay, that they will survive somehow. When his hand sneaks under Hikaru's clothes to press over his heartbeat, he can feel every rib, sharp along the way.  
  
The rice runs out, and they lose the energy for scavenging. They sit against the wall of the cave with the blankets draped around them and try to keep the fire alive. The wood pile is nearly gone, too. Pavel puts Hikaru's shaking fingers in his mouth, wanting to make him warm. They have two gloves between them: before they ever met, both of them lost one from the sets their armies provided.  
  
Pavel falls asleep and wakes up in Hikaru's lap. He can hear Hikaru's heartbeat under his ear, and it's not as strong as it once was. It seems to be slowing. He puts his cold nose under Hikaru's chin and nudges him until he groans a little and nuzzles back, his eyes still closed.  
  
"Husband," Pavel whispers. "You can turn into a bear now. A big bear with lots of fat to keep us both alive until spring. I will still love you. I will love you even if you're a bear forever after. Oh, God, why can't you understand me?" Pavel sobs, delirious enough to believe that if Hikaru spoke Russian he would become a bear, his fear of losing Pavel's love dispelled. Hikaru holds Pavel's head against his chest and stares at the mouth of the cave, which is almost completely covered by snow. Neither of them has the energy to dig.  
  
The night when the snow finally covers the cave mouth is pitch dark. They can't make a fire without suffocating themselves, and they haven't got the energy to move from beneath the blankets, anyway. Pavel doesn't want to sleep, but he can't stay awake. He dreams of falcons dropping dead from the sky, but every time he reaches one in the snow he sees that it's only a stone. He turns from the stones and can't find Hikaru.  
  
When Pavel opens his eyes, the mouth of the cave is a wall of sparkling white snow. It's beautiful. He wants Hikaru to see it, but his ear is against Hikaru's chest, and he can't hear Hikaru's heart beating anymore. He doesn't move, because Hikaru's cheek is resting on top of his head, and Pavel doesn't want to disturb him. His tears freeze in the corners of his eyes as he clutches at Hikaru's cold body, trying to slide his exposed hand under Hikaru's shirt, to feel the last warmth of him before it drains away, but his hand is numb with frostbite and he can't move it.  
  
"God, take me with him," Pavel begs, though he stopped believing in God when his brothers died, one after the other in this war. "Take me with him and keep me there always. I don't want to fight for any army that he is not a part of. I don't want to fight for any army at all. Just take me with him. Make him a bear and me a girl. Make him a falcon and me a tree. Make us two stones in the same stream. Anything, anything. Please take me now, take me with him, I just want to go where he goes."  
  
~  
  
Pavel is flung into a memory of his next life without warning. It feels harsh and unreal at first, but he slips into it as he narrows the focus of his mind, taking in his surroundings. He's an American now, but not quite. The child of immigrants. He joined the Marines when he heard about what was happening in Russia, where his parents were born, a country he's been taught to revere but one he's never been allowed to visit. He didn't understand why his parents, both Jewish, didn't see his enlistment as the noble gesture he intended it to be. He's eighteen years old, and the war is over, but he still owes the Marines three years of service. He's stationed in Tokyo, or what used to be Tokyo, and it's nothing like he expected. It doesn't feel noble.  
  
He tries to fit in. The other men like him because he's small and harmless. Half the reason he joined the Marines, if he's honest with himself, is that he's tired of being thought of this way. He wanted to kill an enemy, a Nazi, to prove himself, to whom he's not sure. Instead, he's being taken to a whore house, the others laughing and asking him if he's a virgin.   
  
"No," Pavel says, glaring at them. He's lying. They know this, and they laugh harder.  
  
The brothels in Tokyo are run by the crumpled Japanese government. They're intended to serve as a buffer, absorbing the blow so that the Americans won't take honorable Japanese women by force. Pavel can't imagine a national consciousness that works this way, but he thinks his parents probably could. For the first time in his life he feels very spoiled, sheltered. Still, he doesn't write to his parents about the reality of this ruined place. He doesn't want them to know that he's made a mistake.  
  
He knows he'll be teased if he doesn't at least feign in interest in what the brothel has to offer. He gets drunk at the bar in the lobby and laughs with the others, smiles at the girls. Whatever feelings they have about what they've been asked to do are remote from him, and he can't pity them because they won't allow it, their eyes steely and guarded. The mourning they do for their innocence is private, and this embarrasses Pavel more than anything, the fact that he wants to know them, or help them, and that they look right through him, as if he is a just a part moving past them on a factory line, a callous fool who will be pleased with a smile.  
  
He needs fresh air. There's a patio in the back by a hot spring bath, and Pavel smokes a cigarette with a shaking hand, staring at the bath. It's empty, his friends inside with their women. Pavel leans against the fence on the far wall, wanting to go home. That's when he sees the girl on the second floor balcony.  
  
It's just a little porch attached to one of the rooms. She's wearing a kimono, like all of them, and Pavel would bet that it's a cheap one, though he can't really tell the difference. It's pink, with multi-colored flowers patterned across it, and as Pavel narrows his eyes, studying this girl, he would bet that she didn't appreciate being handed a pink one when she came here out of desperation. That it was an added insult.  
  
She's beautiful, trying to be hard but not quite pulling it off, though Pavel would be intimidated by her if they were standing face to face. Her hair is down, and Pavel wonders if there is a G.I. snoring in her room, her job done for the night. She's smoking a cigarette, too, squinting at the horizon. Pavel feels like he's seen her eyes somewhere before.  
  
Now, looking back, seeing this from where he stands, he knows that it's Hikaru.   
  
She sees him watching her and flips her perfect curtain of dark hair over her shoulder. Pavel feels like he should wave, or shout an apology, something. He ends up just lifting his hand, feeling nervous, and guilty for watching her, though she's not doing anything particularly intimate. He's afraid she's going to scowl at him and disappear back into the room attached to the balcony, and she seems to consider doing so for a few moments, her eyes narrowing, but then she just lifts her hand, waving back.  
  
Pavel doesn't know if he should keep looking at her or if that would be rude. She's got her arms folded on the balcony's railing, her cigarette tipped between two fingers as she blows smoke from her bright red lips. She seems amused. Pavel feels like he should begin some sort of performance, dance around or make a joke, and then it feels like he doesn't need to, like she knows him and forgives him for having nothing to offer.  
  
She goes back into the room and Pavel sighs. He puts his cigarette out against the fence that surrounds the hot spring and slips the butt into his pocket. He stands there waiting for a long time, for something, for that girl, then gives up and walks back into the brothel. He wants to go home, or at least back to the base, and if he doesn't lose his virginity here his friends will call him a fag, and might not be his friends anymore. He's staring at the floor, fretting about this, when he crashes into Hikaru.  
  
"Hello," she says, thickly accented. Pavel realizes that he's got his hands braced on her shoulders and lets her go. She smells really fucking good, like oranges or something. Pavel remembers that he's drunk and shakes his head like a wet dog. She laughs, holding her hand over her mouth.  
  
"I saw you," Pavel says, blinking rapidly. "On the balcony."  
  
"Balcony," she says, speaking slowly, like she's never heard the word before. She takes Pavel's hands in hers and steps forward, puts her mouth against his ear. "Baby," she whispers. "This is you. Yes? Baby."  
  
"I'm young," Pavel admits, shaking now. His hands are tight around hers. The lobby of the brothel is dark, the bartender wiping down his counter, a few girls muttering together in the lounge, having a post-coital smoke together while their customers saw logs upstairs.  
  
"Baby – baby upstairs?" she asks, stepping back and batting her long, dark eyelashes. Pavel whimpers, and she laughs. They're still holding hands, fingers interlaced now.   
  
"You don't have to," Pavel says, on the verge of tears for some reason. He feels like he can see into this one's eyes, though he knows that she's trying just as hard as the others to make herself inscrutable.   
  
"Come," she says, and he lets her lead him up to the second floor. He's afraid she's going to have to kick some other Marine out when they reach her room, but there's no one there. The room is spare but cozy, and she sits Pavel down on her bed, then hands him a little cup of sake.  
  
" _Kanpai_?" she says, asking him if he's learned this yet. He nods, and they click their glasses together. Pavel drinks, his other hand clawed around his knee. He doesn't want to take advantage of this girl, but he doesn't want to leave her, either.  
  
So Pavel loses his virginity to a Japanese whore who laughs and kisses his cheeks as he screams out his orgasm, and then he goes back to America to marry the daughter of his mother's friend. He knows, when he comes home from work early one afternoon to blow his brains out in their bedroom, that it's for her, that girl in Japan who rubbed her face against his neck as he fell asleep in her bed.   
  
~  
  
Pavel grows accustomed to the changes more quickly than he expected to. Already he is a boy with skinned knees who is watching the Oriental family move in across the street. His sister is standing next to him, smoking a cigarette, saying _There goes the neighborhood_.   
  
At school, Hikaru is picked on. Pavel, who has always been picked on, stares at Hikaru when he thinks he can get away with it. Sometimes Hikaru looks up at him, glaring. Pavel pretends to hate him like the others, though he hates Hikaru for not recognizing him as an ally, while the others just hate him on principle. Hikaru is almost as smart as Pavel, which is also irritating. They have two classes together, Biology and Gym. In Biology they are superstars, commended by their teacher and competitive with each other. In Gym they are pummeled, and the coaches laugh.   
  
One day, Pavel skips Gym, walking through the woods behind the school instead, where he kicks pine straw around and thinks about his make-believe universe where he is the commander of a spaceship. The boys who pick on him are peons on this spaceship, and when the Galactic Empire encounters violent alien cultures Pavel sends these peons off to be torn asunder by space gorillas. He looks up when he's halfway to the playground and sees Hikaru sitting on a felled tree trunk up ahead, wiping at his eyes.   
  
When Pavel comes to stand in front of him, Hikaru glowers at him. Pavel can see that he's embarrassed about crying, his face turning red. Pavel holds onto the straps of his book bag and waits for an explanation.  
  
"Leave me alone," Hikaru says. It's the first time Pavel has heard him speak. Even in class, Hikaru answers with chalk on the board or nods. He doesn't have an accent, and Pavel isn't sure what sort of accent he expected. Hikaru is the first Oriental he's known.  
  
"My grandparents were from Russia," Pavel says.  
  
"So?"  
  
Pavel shrugs. "My mom had to go to a church to learn English. They were mean to her."  
  
Hikaru frowns and stares at Pavel like he's an idiot. Pavel's cheeks burn, and he looks down at the ground, nudging the pine straw with the toe of his sneaker  
  
"Why aren't you at gym class?" Pavel asks, though he knows perfectly well why Hikaru is here instead. The gym teachers like to make them play dodge ball, so that the boys like Pavel and Hikaru get bruises from rubber balls that come at them like lightening rods. They want to teach boys like Pavel and Hikaru what the world is really like. It's the whole point of school. Pavel's mother told him this, sounding sad about it.  
  
"I hate school," Hikaru says, glaring, like Pavel is the one who forces him to attend. "I hate this town. I want to go back to California."  
  
"California?" Pavel sits down beside Hikaru, still holding onto the straps of his book bag, flapping his arms a little and making himself stop when he remembers that his sister told him that he looks like a chicken when he does that. "Where movie stars are?"  
  
"How old are you?" Hikaru asks. His eyes are still narrowed like he can't believe Pavel has the nerve to speak to him.  
  
"Fifteen."  
  
"Then how come you're in junior level Biology?"  
  
"They made me. They said I tested in."  
  
"So you're just a freshman?" Hikaru sits up a little straighter, as if this he will accept, Pavel's lesser qualification.  
  
"I guess."  
  
"You _guess_?"  
  
"I mean – yeah! I'm a freshman, okay? Geez."   
  
They're both quiet for awhile, listening to the sound of the forest that stands between the high school and the suburbs, woodpeckers knocking against dead trees high above them.  
  
"So did you see any movie stars?" Pavel asks. "In California?"  
  
"No, dummy. We lived in San Francisco. Hollywood is way south of there."  
  
"Yeah? So. Who's your favorite movie star?"  
  
"I don't know." Hikaru scoffs like it's a dumb question. "Henry Fonda?"  
  
"Henry Fonda!"  
  
"From _Once Upon a Time in the West_."  
  
"Oh, that guy." Pavel shrugs. He feels kind of warm through his chest, and he thinks this might be why his mother is always begging him to try and make friends, so that he'll be able to feel this way. "Have you seen _2001_ , though?"  
  
"That space movie?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"No. My mom wouldn't let me see it." Hikaru makes a face. "She says it's too scary."  
  
"It is!" Pavel grabs Hikaru's arm, then lets it go, blushing. "I mean. It's good."  
  
"Well." Hikaru shrugs. "I'm not allowed."   
  
"My sister works at the movie theater!" Pavel's heart is pounding, his whole face flushed, and he's kind of scared of friendship, if this is what it's like, but that's not stopping him. "She would let us in for free!"  
  
So Hikaru and Pavel walk to the movie theater, and though Pavel's sister isn't working, her hippie friend Robbie lets them in for free. Pavel's eyes are glued to the screen, and he's so excited about being able to see the movie again, and during the school day no less, that he doesn't notice that Hikaru is fast asleep until it's almost over.  
  
"That was the most boring movie I've ever seen in my life," Hikaru mumbles as they're walking back toward school together. Hikaru is still bleary from sleeping in the theater, blinking heavily. Pavel's feelings were hurt, a little, when Hikaru slept through the movie, but now Pavel is kind of glad that he did, because he can stare at Hikaru while he's like this, tired and soft.   
  
"It's my favorite movie ever," Pavel says, beaming up at the cloud-covered sky, thinking about space. Hikaru laughs, and Pavel blushes, but when he sneaks a look at Hikaru, his laughter doesn't seem entirely malicious. He's grinning at Pavel, shaking his head.  
  
"You're so weird," he says, but it seems like a compliment.  
  
They're allies after that, calculating exactly how many gym classes they need to attend without failing, happy with their findings when they realize they can skip twice a week. Some days they just hang out under the bleachers at the football field, talking about spacecraft. Hikaru wants to design planes, or maybe rockets, he hasn't decided. Pavel wants to make movies about space, aliens and astronauts, and he tells Hikaru all about his plans as he jots them down, sci-fi comics scattered between them. Hikaru tells Pavel he's a dork, but if Pavel relies too heavily on a _deus ex machina_ , Hikaru will offer other suggestions for his movie plots.   
  
When the school year ends, they have three whole months to spend together, and because neither of them has any other friends, they are almost constantly in each other's company, lying on the floor in Pavel's basement and reading comics, sneaking into movies for free, and swimming down by the lake when the cool kids aren't there to pick on them. One day, half the football team suddenly comes thundering up to the lake in their trucks while Pavel and Hikaru are sunning themselves on the shore, and they hide under the dock, certain that their fate will involve a severe beating if they're caught here, alone together in their swim trunks. Neither of them is unaware of what is going on and exactly what other people will think about it. When they huddle under the dock together, standing on the muddy lake bottom with their shoulders just barely under the water, they hold on to each other, breathing hard but as silently as possible. They're are both shivering by the time the others leave, chased off an hour later by cops who were called by the owners of the houses that overlook the lake. As the lake goes quiet again, Pavel's heart pounds, his hands still on Hikaru's slippery skin, underwater. They stare at each other, and Hikaru reaches up to touch Pavel's cheek.   
  
"You're cold," he says, stuttering, and Pavel gets the impression that he started to say something else and lost his nerve. Pavel nods and they climb out, going for the towels they hid under the dry part of the dock when they heard the others coming. They walk home with their teeth chattering and say goodbye when they come to their separate houses. Pavel takes a long, hot shower, staring at the avocado green tile with his mouth hanging open and his eyes lidded, his hand on his cock as he dreams about Hikaru's hands moving on him under the water at the lake. They were just the slightest movements, careful adjustments, but every time Hikaru's thumb shifted over Pavel's hip bone or his fingers tightened on Pavel's side, it lit Pavel's adrenaline-fueled nerves up like a rocket leaving the atmosphere. And then there's the matter of what their eyes were doing to each other. Fucking each other, practically, Pavel thinks with a grin, his stomach pinching up with the memory of Hikaru's dark eyes boring into his. He comes onto the wall of the shower, not sure what will happen now, how things will change.  
  
Two days later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walk on the moon. Pavel watches with Hikaru's family; Pavel's father is boycotting the broadcast because he was rooting for Russia. Hikaru and Pavel sit on the floor, Hikaru's sisters on the couch behind them, eating popcorn. Pavel can't eat; he has no appetite, his stomach in knots. He's afraid he's going to witness something horrible, a sudden alien attack. When the broadcast ends with just some fuzzy words from space, he finds himself feeling disappointed. Hikaru's parents head outside to grill hamburgers and his sisters disperse to their rooms. Hikaru looks over at Pavel and grins.  
  
"Was it everything you thought it would be?" he asks.   
  
And that's the moment when Pavel knows that if he doesn't kiss Hikaru soon, he'll die.  
  
Pavel spends the night at Hikaru's house, sleeping on the floor by Hikaru's bed, as he's done several times already this summer. No one seems to notice or care; Hikaru's parents think Pavel is odd but harmless, and Pavel's family is too preoccupied with his sister's out of wedlock pregnancy to worry about the time he spends with the family across the street. Pavel once corrected his sister at the dinner table when she called Hikaru Chinese, which is what most everyone calls him if not 'Oriental,' and she glared at him and asked what the difference was before bursting into tears, which is pretty much all she does since Robbie the hippie knocked her up.  
  
"How soon do you think we'll live in space?" Pavel says.  
  
"You and me?" Hikaru says. Pavel can hear his smile, and he grins up at the glow in the dark stars on the ceiling of Hikaru's bedroom, left there by a previous tenant.   
  
"I mean _people_ ," Pavel says. "You know what I mean."  
  
"I don't know, maybe in the year 2000? There will at least be, like, vacation colonies on the moon. Maybe Mars, too. Resorts, you know?"  
  
"What else do you think will be different?" Pavel asks, fingering the edge of his sleeping bag. This particular question as been on his mind all night, while he ate hamburgers with Hikaru's family and watched the Twilight Zone with them after dinner. "I mean, about society."  
  
"Well. Maybe you'll be able to pick what kind of baby you want to have. You know? Like what eye color, how tall. Stuff like that."  
  
"What about natural selection?"  
  
"I'm not saying I think it will be good. I'm just saying you'll be able to. Aw, people are fucked, anyway, don't you think? It'll be like 1984."  
  
"No. No way!" Pavel's fingers curl around the edge of his blanket. "I think people will just keep getting better. Smarter. And do you think – I mean – like, there used to be arranged marriages, and we don't do that anymore. So, in the future – do you think – people will just – love whoever they want? More than they do now?"  
  
Pavel's cheeks are burning. That all sounded much more eloquent in his head. Hikaru is silent up in his bed, and then he leans over the side to look at Pavel, and Pavel's eyes water, because Hikaru always knows what he means, even when he's clumsy with his words.   
  
"I think people already love whoever they want to," Hikaru says. His voice is soft, like this is a secret, and it is, oh, God, it is. "I think they always have."  
  
Pavel whimpers, and Hikaru scoots over in his bed, holding the blankets up. Pavel doesn't need to be asked twice. He climbs into the bed and slides into Hikaru's arms as Hikaru pulls the blankets up over them, almost over their heads. It's cozy and frantic at the same time: neither of them has kissed anyone before, and as they try to figure out how, licking at each other and panting, their bodies are grinding against each other as if they've got wills of their own, skinny knees bumping as they rub their erections together desperately. Finally they get close enough to give up on kissing, Pavel tucking his face against Hikaru's neck and Hikaru squeezing Pavel's ass into his hands, and when the slits in their boxer shorts slide open at the exact same moment, for one millisecond the skin on Pavel's flushed cock touches the skin on Hikaru's, and they both come like they've been pushed off a cliff, crying out and clutching at each other, hips pumping, skin searing hot with pleasure. Pavel goes limp on top of Hikaru, feeling as if he's glimpsed heaven, or maybe just the vast beauty of the universe, something he could never capture in a sci-fi movie even if he had the world's biggest budget. Hikaru leaves one hand on Pavel's ass and slides the other up to the back of his neck, rubbing him there like he needs soothing. Pavel kisses Hikaru under his jaw. He's never felt so warm, so happy.  
  
"Do you think they heard us?" Hikaru whispers, meaning his family.  
  
"They'll just think we were laughing or something," Pavel whispers back. He clings to Hikaru, unwilling to move, and Hikaru tucks the blankets up around Pavel's shoulders. Hikaru wraps his arms around Pavel under the blankets, tight, like he'll never let him go.  
  
"You are so cute," Hikaru says. He sneaks a hand up under Pavel's t-shirt and strokes his back, making him shiver and moan. "Do you even know?"  
  
"Don't call me cute," Pavel says, though he really doesn't mind it. "I'm not innocent like everyone thinks. I've jerked off to you. Thinking about you, I mean."  
  
"That's still cute," Hikaru says, and then they really are laughing, shushing each other.  
  
What follows is the best month of Pavel's life. Even while it's happening, even at fifteen years old, he knows that nothing that comes afterward will even come close. He and Hikaru spend every long summer day together, going on hikes, Pavel's head on Hikaru's shoulder as he makes meticulous lists and sketches of the trees and wildflowers they encounter. Pavel keeps a list of the birds: Yellow-rumped Warbler, Ruby-Crowned Kinglet, Black-Capped Chickadee. They're hoping to win the prize their Biology teacher offers to the students who observe the most local flora and fauna during their summer vacations: an expensive scientific calculator. At night, they sneak out of their bedroom windows and walk down by the lake, where there's almost no light pollution. They stare at the stars and Hikaru listens to Pavel's sci-fi stories, which are now mostly about a crew of space pirates whose navigator and pilot are secretly in love. At one point he decides that it's not a secret, that the whole crew knows, because by then it's a normal thing.  
  
"Space married," Pavel says one night, curled up against Hikaru's side, staring at Hikaru while Hikaru stares at the stars. "That's what they'll call it when two guys are in space together for a long time and they sleep together every night and all that. Space married. But then, when they get to ports and stuff, they don't go off with other people. They stay together, because even though they're these tough guys and everything, they're in love."   
  
Pavel blushes and wilts a little. Hikaru is two years older, and Pavel knows he sounds very young to Hikaru sometimes, and that sometimes his enthusiasm and tendency to talk nonstop for hours at a time can be annoying. Hikaru looks over at Pavel and pulls a crunchy leaf from his hair.   
  
"I love you, too," he says.  
  
They sleep in Hikaru's bed, under the glow-in-the-dark stars, curled around each other and smelling like the woods around the lake, or sometimes like the lake itself if they dared to swim in the moonlight. Hikaru gets better and better at touching Pavel, slow and gentle, keeping him calm enough to last longer than a few minutes. Pavel doesn't try to match Hikaru as he improves, just drools on Hikaru's pillow and lets Hikaru's hands open his legs and rub his hard nipples, making Pavel feel like he's a willing captive of the natives on a pleasure planet. He sleeps so deeply in Hikaru's arms, melted against the mattress under the weight of Hikaru's body, and hates the dawn, when he has to kiss Hikaru's cheek and sneak out the window.   
  
All of this happiness isn't without an attendant anxiety. Pavel worries constantly that they'll be caught, either by someone who stumbles upon them by the lake or by their families. Pavel's parents are still too caught up in his sister's pregnancy drama to notice anything different about him, but his sister grabs his arm in the kitchen one morning as he's running out the door to meet Hikaru, a piece of toast in his mouth, and when she glares at him Pavel can see the dangerous envy in her eyes.   
  
"Don't think I don't know why you're so damn cheerful," she says, in Russian, which they have not spoken to each other since they were very young.   
  
"Let me go," he says, yanking his arm free, but she grabs it again. She's beginning to get fat now, the bulge of her pregnant stomach hanging over the waistband of her skirt. Robbie the hippie has skipped town.   
  
"Mom and Dad think you're such a little saint," his sister says, her eyes narrowing. "How would you like me to tell them that you're climbing in that chink's window every night to do God knows what with him?"  
  
"They'd know you were lying," Pavel says, pulling free again. "They know you're a crazy bitch."  
  
She tries to slap him but he ducks it and runs out of the house. He doesn't tell Hikaru about what she said, not wanting to worry him, but Hikaru senses that something is wrong, and puts his arm around Pavel as they're walking through the woods together, Pavel holding the hand-drawn map he's been working on.  
  
"What's the matter?" Hikaru asks, giving Pavel's shoulders a shake.  
  
"Nothing."  
  
"You're so quiet."  
  
"Sorry."  
  
"That's okay. Want to stop for lunch?"  
  
Pavel nods, and they sit at the bottom of a rocky cliff to eat the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches Hikaru packed for the day. Something about the little thermos of apple juice that he passes to Pavel between bites breaks Pavel's heart, and he has to blink back tears.  
  
"You ever think a bear might live in that cave?" Pavel says, nodding to the dark cave mouth at the foot of the cliff, which he and Hikaru have considered venturing into, though they haven't yet worked up the nerve.  
  
"I doubt it," Hikaru says. "Probably just a bunch of bats. But maybe a bear."  
  
In the moment, Pavel would rather they get eaten by a bear together than go home to face his sister's accusations. But he suffers no wrath from his parents that evening; they eat dinner in front of the television as usual, Pavel's sister sour-faced in the recliner where his father usually sits, Pavel's heart pounding as he forces himself to swallow down bites of Salisbury steak despite his complete lack of appetite. When the meal is over he goes to his room, trying to feel relieved, but he can't shake a feeling of acute doom, and falls asleep dreaming about bear attacks and bats getting caught in his hair. He wakes up panting, and Hikaru is climbing in through his window, looking concerned. Hikaru sits on Pavel's bed and pulls him into his arms without a word, stroking Pavel's hair as he comes out of his dream. Pavel squeezes his eyes shut against Hikaru's shoulder and just clings to him, not sure what else he can do.  
  
Two weeks later, Pavel goes over to Hikaru's house in the morning as usual and finds Hikaru sitting on the front steps, hugging his knees and looking terrified. He doesn't hop up to meet Pavel halfway down the front path as usual, and he doesn't have his pack ready for their day of collecting specimens for the Biology prize.   
  
"What's wrong?" Pavel asks, freezing at the foot of the stairs, afraid to move. Hikaru gives him a wounded look and crosses his arms tightly over his chest.   
  
"My parents had a big fight last night," he says. His voice is scratchy and his eyes are red-rimmed. "My mom hates it here. Someone said something to her at the market yesterday, and – and my sisters hate it here, too. We're the only – there's no one else like us here – people act like –" Hikaru rubs a hand over his face and sighs. He seems embarrassed. Pavel can't move. Something is about to go very wrong. He's felt it now for weeks.  
  
"We're moving back to California," Hikaru says. His voice shakes as he says it. Pavel feels like he's been pushed over, but he's still standing. "They want to leave next week, so my sisters and I can start the school year over there. I – I'm going to be a senior, I can come back here for college, it'll be okay – Pavel, oh, please, God, don't cry."  
  
Pavel does cry, almost nonstop for a week as he watches Hikaru's family pack their things into brown boxes, everything in Hikaru's room disappearing until only the glow-in-the-dark stars are left. Hikaru promises to write and call and visit and come back to the east coast for college. He spends his last night in Vermont in Pavel's bed, and he takes Pavel's virginity while they both cry, their bodies shaking with it. It hurts a little at first, but then it feels so good, which just makes Pavel cry harder, cling tighter. In the morning, Pavel's skin and sheets smell different, more like Hikaru, less like the boy Pavel used to be. Hikaru dresses in the blue light of dawn and kisses Pavel goodbye, and Pavel closes his whole body around the pillow that smells like Hikaru's hair as he listens to the moving van bump noisily over the end of the driveway across the street. For the rest of the summer, he sneaks into Hikaru's empty room every night and stares up at the fake stars, feeling dead, like a stuffed toy that tumbled out of a moving box and got left behind.  
  
Twenty-four years later, Pavel moves back into his parents' house, into his childhood bedroom. His sister is now living in Pittsburgh with her third husband, and his father is dead. It's just Pavel and his mother. When she knows that Pavel doesn't have much longer, when he's struggling to keep down chicken broth and lift his head from his pillow, she finally shows him the five unopened letters that came from Hikaru twenty-four years ago. She knows now that Pavel is going to die of the thing she thought she could save him from when she hid the letters in a shoe box in her bedroom closet, and it's too late for apologies, so she doesn't offer any, just hands him the letters. Pavel tries to read them, but he's too weak to even hold them for very long, so his mother reads them to him, her voice trembling and breaking in places, and Pavel wishes she would have censored the parts where Hikaru begs Pavel to write back and wonders if Pavel hates him for what happened just before Hikaru left, that night that Pavel would close his eyes and remember desperately whenever some other man was inside him, but she doesn't censor anything.  
  
"I drove to Utah last night," his mother reads when she reaches the bottom of the last letter, her voice strong again. She's determined to finish, to do this for him. "I got all the way to Salinia before I turned around. I know I would get there and you would just tell me to go. I know I screwed up. I thought you were crying because you didn't want me to leave, Pavel. I'm so stupid. I didn't know I hurt you that night. I must have. I'd never done it before either and it was stupid to even try. I thought I was being romantic by not talking, but I was just being horrible, thoughtless, a monster. I'll never forgive myself for it. I guess you won't, either. You know what I found the other day when I was packing for college? That list I made of all the plants we saw that summer. I guess you still have the list of birds. I hate the thought that they're not together. I sat there crying like an idiot because I didn't leave my half of the list with you, because you didn't win that calculator."  
  
His mother takes a deep breath, and Pavel knows, like he knew when she read to him as a little boy, the blankets pulled up to his chin as he fought to keep his tired eyes open, that she's coming to the end now.  
  
"I know now that I'll never see you again," she reads. "But I'll never stop thinking about you, and dreaming about us on our ship in your movie, space married. I miss you every time I see a bird, a wildflower, every time I see the stars. Every single day."  
  



	2. Chapter 2

Pavel is still weak with the memory of his last life as he fades into the next, but it doesn't last long. He feels a kind of power in this new body that quickly envelopes him, drawing him into the memory. He's seventeen years old, tall and beautiful, a girl with long, gold hair that falls in messy waves down her back. She's sitting at the dining room table during one of her parents' dinner parties, allowed to sip from a glass of wine as her parents laugh with their self-important academic friends. It's the thickest part of summer, the sun just starting to go down at eight-thirty. Across from Pavel is the most desperately unhappy-looking man she's ever seen, a physics professor who is sitting beside his English professor wife, being ignored by the humanities faculty who are screaming over each other, spilling wine, talking about politics. The man across the table is Hikaru, and Pavel feels like her chest has been pierced when their eyes meet. She lost her virginity two months ago to a stupid high school boy and she's felt like the most powerful creature in the galaxy ever since. She stares at the physics professor, daring him to look at her again. He does, and he's not blushing, not like the other older men she's flirted with teasingly, her parents' stupid friends. Hikaru holds her gaze as he takes a long drink from his glass of wine. He looks like he knows exactly what he wants.  
  
"So you teach physics?" Pavel says, playing with her necklace, a single pearl pendant on a thin silver chain.  
  
"Yeah," Hikaru says. "You have any interest in the subject?"  
  
Pavel rolls her eyes and smiles. "It's my favorite," she says. "All the sciences, really. But especially physics. I did senior AP physics last year. Even though I was only a junior."  
  
She's always bragging about herself lately. She doesn't care. For sixteen years she was the awkward, too-tall, bean-pole girl who got straight A's and ran on the track team, but this year she's finally gotten her tits, and enough weight in her ass and hips to make her long legs look lean and beautiful, not stick-like.   
  
"So you've finished high school early?" Hikaru says. The intensity of his gaze hasn't changed, despite the casual tone of their conversation. He's still saying, with his eyes, _Yes, I want to fuck you, little girl. Yes, I know you're thinking about it, too_. Pavel flushes, her legs spreading under the table, bare feet flexing on the carpet. All she's thought about for the past year is sex, and occasionally physics.  
  
"I'm not finished yet," she says. "I have to take one more stupid English lit course in the fall, and an elective."  
  
"You don't like English lit?" Hikaru smirks. "That's what my wife teaches."   
  
Pavel gives the woman a glance. She's laughing at a stupid joke about Bill Clinton, not paying any attention to Hikaru. She's small, thin-lipped. Looks like a bitch.   
  
"Yeah, my mom teaches Russian lit," Pavel says, like Hikaru doesn't know that. "It's not that I don't like to read. I just hate to have those inane fucking discussions about every detail of a novel. I just want to enjoy the story, you know?"  
  
Hikaru doesn't answer, but he smiles, just a little, telling her that, yes, he knows. He seems to know everything about her, and it makes her heart race. It's as if he's looking straight into all the secret parts of her, not impressed by her new confidence, but interested just the same.  
  
"So why do you like physics?" Hikaru asks, leaning forward a little to be heard over more hysterical laughter, another stale Monica Lewinsky joke.   
  
Pavel shrugs, smiling and still pulling on her necklace. "Why do you teach it?" she asks.  
  
"Because it opens the universe to man," Hikaru says, and Pavel shudders, the words _open_ and _to_ and _man_ striking against her again and again, like an echo bouncing around the room. Hikaru sits back, and she can see that he's waiting to see what she'll do. Her hands shaking, Pavel gulps down the last of her wine, dabs at the corners of her lips with her napkin and rises from the table, all while her eyes are still locked on Hikaru's, his dark gaze never faltering, filling her chest with anxious heat. It's like he's already inside her.  
  
She needs no excuse to leave the table; the others are drunk and too preoccupied with themselves to notice as Pavel pads lightly upstairs, not daring to cast a look back at Hikaru as she goes. She lets out her breath in a rush as she pushes into her room, and closes the door behind her, but not all the way, leaving it open just a crack. She walks to the window and stares out at the blazing sunset, counting the seconds. She feels like, somewhere, this has already happened, and she's just waiting to be drawn along helplessly, pulled out to sea by a strong tide.  
  
When the door opens behind her she doesn't turn. She puts her fingers on the dusty windowsill – her mother never cleans – and tries to regain her composure. She turns as Hikaru shuts the door behind him, and she leans against the sill, studying him for a moment. He's not especially tall for a man, only a few inches taller than she is, and it's hard to say how old he is, maybe late thirties; he's younger than her parents, anyway. He's attractive, mostly because he seems so miserable, so willing to finally do whatever he likes because of this or that disappointment in his life. It's like they've both been waiting all their lives for this.   
  
"This is your room?" Hikaru asks. He's standing at the foot of Pavel's bed, hands on his hips, his suit jacket pushed back. He's wearing an untucked Oxford under it, jeans. Pavel can hear the dinner party going on without them downstairs, dishes clattering into the sink and the bark of her mother's laugh. She can feel the last of the day's heat coming through the windows, warm on her shoulders.   
  
"I think you know whose room this is," Pavel says, trying to be sexy. She curses herself inwardly for sounding like a Bond villain. She's nervous, wet just from the way Hikaru looks at her. He walks toward her slowly, and when he finally puts his hand on her hip she lets out a long, shaky breath. He smells like wine and old books, and something darker, too, nothing like the sharp, clean scent of the boys she's been with. He smells like a man.  
  
"I've got about ten minutes before she starts wondering where I've gone," Hikaru says, lowering his mouth slowly over Pavel's, stopping just short of her lips. He takes a handful of her long hair and tips her head back gently, leaning onto her, pressing her against the window. "Tell me – and this is a serious question: can a girl as young as you come in only ten minutes?"  
  
Pavel whimpers, and that seems to be a good enough answer. Hikaru kisses her, moving his lips almost teasingly over hers, licking at the corners of her mouth but not yet pushing his tongue between her lips, though she's open to him, wanting it. He kisses his way down her neck instead, sucking at her skin, drawing clipped little moans from her as she goes boneless against the window. She's afraid she'll fall through it, her heart pounding. He hoists one of her legs up and guides her to wrap it around his waist, pressing his trapped erection against the front of her cotton panties as her sun dress rides up around her hips. Pavel moans and he whispers _shhhh_ , then gives her the deep kiss she's wanted for so long, since the first time she saw a man kiss a woman in a movie, the slow, hungry, bone-melting kiss that none of the boys who have ever slobbered onto her will ever give to anybody. Pavel understands now what it takes to earn a kiss like this: risking everything, needing it more than anything, caring about nothing else.  
  
Hikaru pulls back to hold Pavel's gaze as he unbuttons the front of her dress, his fingers moving carefully, with precision, as if he's not in any hurry. Pavel is terrified of the way he looks at her, and never wants him to stop, wants him to reach into her panties and feel what it's doing to her, how wet he's made her. When her dress is open he doesn't even bother to reach around and unclasp her bra, just pushes it up and over her breasts, freeing them before cupping them with both hands. He presses his thumbs into her nipples and rubs them in tight circles until her head falls back, her mouth opening in a silent moan, hips bucking as she presses her wet panties shamelessly against his erection.   
  
"God, you're so fucking wet, aren't you?" he says, growling the words into her ear, almost like he's scolding her. Pavel nods and whines with need as he reaches down to squeeze her ass while his other hand keeps working on her left nipple. "I can feel it through my jeans," he whispers. "I've never felt a girl get so wet before. You're going to come for me, aren't you?"  
  
"Yes," Pavel cries, already feeling close. She presses her forehead to his, staring into his eyes again, the hunger she sees there making her feel newly powerful. He seems to sense this in her and groans in response, kissing her hard.   
  
Pavel slides down to her knees, her whole body trembling like it's brand new, woken up for the first time, unbalanced with sensation. She stares up at Hikaru as she works his jeans open, and he watches, his lips parted, chest heaving.   
  
"I wanted to crawl under the table and suck your dick," she says.  
  
"They wouldn't have noticed," he says, and they smile at each other, a new sort of thrill bursting through Pavel's chest. He doesn't just want to fuck her because she's young and willing. He knows she's smart, and not just in the way her teachers have always recognized. He knows she's different from the people downstairs, like he is. It's not just that they both like physics better than politics and philosophy. It's something else, deeper and darker than that. It's something to do with sadness, actually, but Pavel is proud to share it with him.  
  
She sucks him in as deeply as she can, trying all the tricks she's tried on the boys, moving her tongue around on the underside, bobbing her head, even daring to tickle her fingers across his balls. He groans when she does that, and reaches down to pull her off and up, into his arms. She wraps her legs around his waist as they kiss, and he stumbles, trying to walk with his pants around his ankles. They fall onto the bed and laugh, silently but so hard, their eyes watering with it as Hikaru crawls up over her and leans down to kiss her, his heavy body crushing hers to the bed.   
  
"Have you been fucked before?" Hikaru asks in a whisper as he pushes her wet panties down.   
  
"Only by boys," Pavel says, panting. "Are you going to fuck me like a real man?"  
  
He snorts, raising an eyebrow at her attempt at dirty talk. Pavel holds her breath as he leans down and puts his lips against her ear.  
  
"I don't know," he says, his voice so deep now. "Are you going to take my cock like a real woman?"  
  
Pavel moans, writhing beneath him as he fingers her, his thumb rubbing her clit. She would bet he wasn't always an academic, that he at least had to work his way through school; his fingertips are smoothed by callouses. His touch isn't rough, though, or clumsy or impatient, or like anything she's felt before.   
  
"I'm gonna come," she whispers, her arms circling his shoulders.   
  
"Want me to keep going?" he asks. "Or should I fuck it out of you?"  
  
" _Ungh_ , fuck me, yeah, please, fuck me."  
  
He tears her underwear the rest of the way down and spreads her legs wide around him as he enters her, and Pavel arches up to meet the feeling of finally being filled, throbbing around him, painfully on the verge of finishing. She rips her dress and her bra up over her head, wanting him to see her, because she knows she's beautiful, dewy with the newness of it, that she'll never be this beautiful again. Hikaru leans back, holding her long legs against his sides, his chest heaving as his eyes roam over her body.   
  
"Want to hear something really terrible?" Hikaru asks, panting.  
  
"Yes," Pavel says, holding completely still, her eyes locked on his. He looks angry for a moment, then heartbroken, shaking his head.  
  
"I don't think I've ever loved anyone in my life more than I love you right now," he says, his voice shaking.  
  
"That is terrible," Pavel agrees, reaching for him.   
  
She comes as soon as he starts to fuck her, the hard muscles of his stomach rubbing against her already overstimulated clit, and he groans with satisfaction as she clenches around him, gasping out her orgasm and clawing at his back. She knows he won't take long to follow – their time limit is approaching – and she wraps her whole body around his, trying to savor the short time they have together, this moment that will never be matched in either of their lives. She loves the way his shirt and coat feel on her bare, damp skin, the way his hair smells, the way he begins to tremble in her arms as he gets closer and closer.  
  
"You can come in me," she whispers, threading her fingers through his dark hair. "I'm on the pill."  
  
"Good," he says, grunting. "'Cause I feel like I could give you fucking triplets right _nuh-uhh, yeah_."  
  
She loves this best about sex, the way the boys get weak with their orgasms, and it's even better to watch it happen to a man, to Hikaru, who whimpers at the end of his swallowed-up moan, his eyes pinched shut tightly against Pavel's cheek, both of them sweaty and flushed. His tense muscles soften around her as he lets out his breath, his hips still pumping the last of it into her, as if it's been a long time since he did this and he's got a lot stored up. She kisses his nose and he opens his eyes. For maybe half a minute they stay like that, slumped together, staring into each other's eyes, and Pavel thinks that what he said before was true, that in this fading moment, the sun disappearing outside, he does love her, as deeply and honestly as anyone ever will.  
  
"We should go back down," she whispers, stroking his hair. He rubs his nose against the tip of hers.   
  
"Yeah," he says, but he doesn't move until they hear footsteps on the stairs. He pulls out of her then, grabs his pants and underwear and yanks them up, fastening his jeans on the way to the door. Pavel gropes for her dress and holds it over herself as he ducks out the the room without looking back, shutting the door behind him. She can hear him in the hall, laughing and telling someone that he can't figure out which door leads to the bathroom.  
  
Pavel sits up slowly, feeling dizzy. She holds her dress against her chest and looks out at the sunset, which is blazing red, the clouds black and wispy in contrast. By the time she dresses and goes downstairs, Hikaru and his wife have left. There's some talk among the others about stuffy Hikaru always making his poor wife leave parties early. Pavel stands at the front windows and stares at the driveway, the sun gone now, street lamps coming on. She can feel Hikaru's come leaking out of her and pooling into the fresh pair of panties she put on. She might never wash the other ones, which she kicked under her bed. She knows she'll never see him again. After the semester starts she'll go to campus with her mother one afternoon and wander over to the Physics building, but once she sees the drab stairwells and bulletin boards with flyers advertising rooms for rent, she'll turn around and hurry back to the Lit department. She wants to keep the moment as it was forever, doesn't want to spoil it with reality. All throughout her marriage, and during both of her affairs, she'll close her eyes and imagine it's Hikaru inside her, asking her if she wants him to fuck her orgasm out of her, and all of her partners will moan and marvel at how wet she gets, for them, they think, for them.  
  
~  
  
They're doing this thing now on airplanes where not only the stewardesses but the pilots stand there near the cockpit while the passengers board and give them cardboard smiles of thanks. Maybe the pilots always did it and Pavel just never noticed until now, or maybe it's a sign of the airline industry's troubled times, their desperate attempt to inspire some sort of customer loyalty. He might not have even noticed this time, except that one of the pilots, a handsome Asian man about ten years younger than Pavel, gives him the sexiest fucking smile as he's boarding, distracting him so that people behind him grumble and clear their throats until he moves on.  
  
Flustered, Pavel staggers down the aisle to the seat he booked in first class. This trip is clearing out his savings and then some, but it doesn't matter. His life in America is over, and his ticket to Russia is one-way. He's divorced, and his three children all hate him, which he completely understands, given that the reason for his divorce was Pavel's affair with one of his students, an eighteen-year-old boy in Pavel's Slavic History course, a suck-up Pavel didn't even like all that much, but he was willing and Pavel was so lonely, so tired of trying to be something he's not. He was exposed, humiliated, stripped of any semblance of dignity – and he didn't have much to begin with – and the only solution is Russia. Pavel is four generations removed from the Old Country and can't speak the language, but he figures it will come easily to him, not just the language but life itself in that bitter, freezing country that he's never even visited. It's in his blood. And apparently everyone there is an alcoholic and dead by forty-five, so Pavel figures he'll fit right in. He motions to the stewardesses and orders a vodka tonic, and she gives him a pinched little smile.   
  
The flight takes off at sunset, Pavel already on his second vodka tonic. There's a three-hour layover in Paris, and he's looking forward to hanging around Charles de Gaulle airport and drinking some cheap wine before sleeping all the way to Russia. He stares at his reflection in the plastic airplane window and makes a face at himself. He still looks young, but not young enough to fool anyone into thinking that he actually is. An aging twink who never took advantage of his looks when it would have made a difference. A man who married a woman he didn't love just to please his mother. Now that his mother is dead, all that Pavel can think to do is run home to the motherland, mostly for the excuse to get drunk on a daily basis. Ha ha. The last time he saw his youngest son he was accused of being a pedophile. Pavel wanted to tell his son that an eighteen-year-old student wasn't exactly his ideal partner – he'd prefer someone big and dominating who didn't make him mix CDs of weepy acoustic music – but where else was he supposed to meet someone if not at work? Of course he didn't say that, just stared at his shoes and decided to run away.  
  
He plugs in his headphones and watches sappy movies during the flight, thinking about that pilot who smiled at him. He imagines the pilot up in the cockpit punching buttons (or whatever they do) and staring out the front windows (windshield?) of the plane as the clouds part before him, and oh, that uniform, that _hat_. Pavel thinks about going to the bathroom for a jerk off, but instead he orders another drink and stares at _Maid in Manhattan_ , imagining himself as the Jennifer Lopez character and the pilot as Ralph Fiennes. Pavel just wants someone to rescue him. Why not the good-looking son of a bitch who's flying the plane? He falls asleep and wakes himself up with a snore, the old lady next to him pulling on her pearls and giving him a horrified look.   
  
The rest of the flight passes in a blurry state of half-consciousness. People around him are sleeping, and Pavel sleeps in short fits and starts, dreaming of his children and their judgment, his ex-wife's pasty legs as she rubbed lotion on them over on her side of the bed, and the pilot, his dark eyebrows, pink lips, and his ears, sort of big and squished under his cap. Pavel wakes up with a boner and goes to the bathroom to piss it away. He feels like a zombie as he heads back to his seat, wobbling when the plane rocks a little with turbulence.   
  
When Pavel wakes up people have the shades pulled up on their windows, the stewardesses passing out breakfast and one of the pilots coming over the intercom to announce that they will be landing at Charles de Gaulle in twenty minutes and that the local time is eight thirty-two in the morning. Pavel groans and pulls his snuggly first class blanket up to his chin. This is the first time he's flown anything but coach, and he really wishes he'd gotten the window seat. He drinks coffee and eats a plastic-tasting omelet, disappointed by the first class food. Maybe in Paris he'll get some real eggs. Suddenly he wishes that Paris was his final destination, though he's never been there and probably wouldn't fit in. He's not stylish enough for Paris. He's wearing sweatpants, for God's sake.   
  
The landing is smooth, and the touch-down pings against Pavel's cock as he thinks of that pilot coolly setting down his landing gear, skimming over the runway, making it his bitch. Pavel is a little delirious, admittedly, and he wrangles his carry-on bag from the overhead compartment with the help of some guy in the row next to his, giving him a dopey smile in thanks. It seems to take a long time for the runway gate to finally open, and when it does, Pavel walks forward eagerly, hoping that the pilot he saw before departure will be there to wish him a safe journey onward, but there is only the bitchy stewardesses who raised her eyebrows when Pavel asked for a third vodka tonic. He gives her a sneering smile as he leaves, feeling disappointed, but he's not sure what he expected. The pilot pressing a secret note with his phone number on it into Pavel's hand? Pavel has been too clumsy with his gayness, downright neglectful of it, and now he doesn't know what to do with it, how men find each other.   
  
He sits down at the first airport bar he finds and orders a glass of merlot. It's still five euros, because they're in the airport, and it doesn't taste that great, not that Pavel really knows wine. He's staring into the dense purple of the glass when someone sits down beside him.  
  
"Hey, you were on my flight."  
  
Pavel looks up, sees the pilot, and stares, open-mouthed, feeling like he's in one of the bad romantic comedies he watched on the plane. Then he smiles and laughs at himself, shaking his head.  
  
"Yeah – sorry," he says, blinking rapidly. "Jet lag."  
  
"I know jet lag," the pilot says, grinning. He's still in full uniform, hat and all, drinking a Sam Adams, looking like fucking magic as his lips circle the rim of the bottle. And then he takes off his hat, and, oh, God, somehow the hat is even sexier when he's not wearing it.  
  
He's Hikaru, of course – Pavel knows that now.  
  
"So, what brings you to Paris?" Hikaru asks. "Or are you on your way to someplace else?"  
  
"Yeah – on my way to Russia." Pavel grins, embarrassed, as if Hikaru will know the whole story as soon as he hears Pavel's final destination.   
  
"What's in Russia?" Hikaru asks. He's much more attractive than Pavel even realized before, his hair mussed without his hat, making him look boyish.   
  
"In Russia, oh, well, I'm -- my family is from there. Originally." Pavel feels like an asshole, drinking merlot in sweatpants, talking to a guy he fantasized about while staring glassy-eyed at a romantic comedy just a few hours ago. He checks Hikaru's finger, and though there's no ring, Pavel is sure that he's got a woman somewhere, that she's slender and adorable, probably a pharmaceutical sales rep.   
  
"You've still got family there?" Hikaru says. "In Russia?"  
  
"No -- I mean, I might. But nobody's waiting for me, if that's what you mean."  
  
"So you're just going to spend some time, what, on a spiritual journey or something?"  
  
Hikaru grins, and Pavel just stares for a moment, unable to get his parted lips to close. He feels needy and hopeless and isn't sure why someone like Hikaru is even bothering to talk to him.   
  
"My wife left me," Pavel says. Ah, yes: he's drunk. "Because I cheated on her. My kids hate me. So I'm going to Russia. Sorry."  
  
Pavel waits for Hikaru to give him a pitying and slightly frightened look before slowly moving away with his drink, but he just smirks a little.  
  
"Sorry?" Hikaru says. He drinks from his beer, staring at Pavel as if he actually wants to hear more, further explanation.   
  
"I'm kind of sorry for existing lately," Pavel says. "I feel like I should apologize to everyone I see. Like, 'oh, Jesus, sorry to have wandered into your line of vision.' I feel like the best I can do is impose."  
  
"So you're going to Russia, to foist yourself onto a new population."  
  
"Yeah." Pavel grins. Hikaru grins back. Pavel wonders if he's being chatted up. Maybe this guy has a thing for aging twinks.   
  
"Was it worth it? Hikaru asks.  
  
"What?"  
  
"Having the affair." Hikaru motions to the bartender and he brings two more beers. Hikaru passes one to Pavel and drinks from the other, raising his eyebrow. Pavel's heart is pounding. He's not sure why this is happening now, when he's middle-aged and half-drunk, but it's definitely significant.   
  
"Well," Pavel says.   
  
"I mean, do you miss your wife? Still love her?"  
  
"I never really loved her." Pavel swallows heavily. He figures, what the hell. He might as well go all in. "The affair was with a man. Well, a teenager. One of my students. But he was legal. Oh, God." Pavel drinks from his beer, wincing. "I don't know why I'm telling you this."   
  
"So you're saying it was worth it?" Hikaru is grinning, and Pavel isn't sure if Hikaru is laughing with him or at him. Either way, he's glad for the company.   
  
"Not really," Pavel says. "Not for the way my kids reacted. I mean, I wanted out of the marriage, yes. But the guy -- Kevin -- he wasn't that great. It was my first -- you know. Thing with a guy. And it wasn't really what I'd built it up to be."  
  
"That's sad, actually." Hikaru drinks and narrows his eyes a little, like he's trying to figure Pavel out. "But now, I don't know. Maybe you get to start your life over."  
  
"I'm too old for that."  
  
"How old are you?" Hikaru asks, frowning.   
  
"How old do you think I am?"  
  
"I don't know. Thirty-five?"  
  
"Ha! Older than that."  
  
"Are you going to make me guess?"  
  
"How old are you?" Pavel asks.  
  
"Thirty-seven," Hikaru says. "You can't be older than forty."  
  
"Yes, I can. Five years older."  
  
"Jesus!" Hikaru blinks rapidly, frowning. "Well. You've got a baby face."  
  
Pavel snorts and takes a long drink, blushing. He's alarmed to look at the clock behind the bar and see that he only has two more hours before his flight starts boarding. He thinks of the dark, quiet sky that will take him to St. Petersburg and feels depressed.  
  
"I thought you were younger than me," Hikaru says. Pavel gives him a look.  
  
"You thought about it? When?"  
  
"Just now, I guess." Hikaru grins. "So. What'd you think of the plane ride?"  
  
"What did I think of it? It was fine." Pavel is blushing intensely now. So he wasn't imagining things when he got on the plane. Hikaru actually has his eye on him. He sits up a little straighter, feeling nervous.   
  
"Landing smooth enough for you?" Hikaru asks. His smile is so sweet; there's got to be something wicked behind it.   
  
"Yeah, it was smooth." Pavel gulps his beer, though he already feels a little sick and should really stop drinking. He doesn't know how to do this: flirting, or landing the deal, or whatever. Kevin did most of the work during the affair. Pavel just stammered nervously and followed his lead. Even when Kevin was asking to be fucked, Pavel didn't really feel like he was on top.   
  
"I just had a really controlling mother," Pavel blurts, maybe actively trying to scare Hikaru away, because he can't handle this, doesn't know what to do with Hikaru's long, hungry stares, how to feed them. "So. There was that issue. I never really knew what to do with myself until I had her, you know, instructions, and she wanted me to marry Olivia -- we were in the orchestra together, me and Olivia, and my mother was a concert violinist, and --"  
  
There's a buzzing noise and Hikaru reaches into his pocket for his phone. Pavel has never felt like such a fool. He imagines Hikaru and the stewardesses laughing uproariously about this encounter later. Pavel hides his burning face in his beer glass while Hikaru frowns down at his phone.  
  
"My next flight got canceled," Hikaru says. "Weather trouble in Bangkok, apparently." He grins. "Guess I'm spending the night in Paris."  
  
"Must be nice," Pavel mutters, humiliated.   
  
"You like Paris?"  
  
"I don't know. I've never been before. I like it so far," he adds, stupidly, trying to be flirtatious, as if he hasn't already spent that dime.  
  
"You should stay for a night or two," Hikaru says. "Just change your connecting flight to Russia. I can help you with that if you want."  
  
"I -- " Pavel's mouth hangs open. It seems to be the only response he can really muster for Hikaru, who is so, so fucking handsome, more so with every passing second. Pavel is beginning to wonder if Hikaru is a flight-trained con man, though Pavel doesn't have anything that someone this skilled would want to steal.  
  
"C'mon," Hikaru says. He steps off his bar stool like this plan is already in motion. "You can tell me more about your issues with your mother."  
  
"Jesus." Pavel makes a vague, flabbergasted noise. "What -- well -- look at me, I can't go to Paris, look at what I'm wearing."  
  
"We can get you some new clothes."  
  
"Why are you being nice to me?" Pavel asks, so confused that he's on the verge of tears. He's also exhausted, and it seems be around ten o'clock in the morning here but it feels like midnight to him, a phenomenon that kind of embodies this whole moment in his life, really.  
  
"Because you were on my plane," Hikaru says, softly, as if he's a little hurt by the question. He ticks Pavel's chin like he's still a twink who needs corralling, regardless of his age. "C'mon."  
  
Pavel's bag is fucked, on its way to Russia, probably never to be seen again. When he tells Hikaru this, in the backseat of a taxi cab as they head into the city, Hikaru laughs hard, and Pavel's eyes water again, because, God, he's beautiful, he's unreal.  
  
"I don't do luggage," Hikaru says.  
  
"What the fuck does that mean?" Pavel asks, grinning. He's starting to feel more like himself, or like the person he always wanted to be, a happy, reckless fool who he buried deep down, thinking it was for the best.  
  
"I don't carry luggage. If I need something when I get to a city, I buy it. If it can't fit in my pocket, I leave it in the hotel room when I go."  
  
"That's crazy. How do you brush your teeth?"  
  
Hikaru reaches into the pocket of his pants and pulls out one of the little black drawstring bags that were provided to the first class passengers on the flight, containing a little travel toothbrush and a three-inch long tube of toothpaste. Pavel takes the toothpaste and turns it over in his hand, looking for some profound philosophy written in the tiny print that lists its ingredients.  
  
"I don't like baggage," Hikaru says when Pavel looks up at him hopefully.   
  
They go to Benetton at the Champs-Élysées, and Pavel leaves his old clothes there after Hikaru and the sales girl help him to dress to dress in dark gray trousers, a fancy blue collar shirt and a charcoal jacket. The clothes are ridiculously expensive, but Hikaru has such a calming presence that it doesn't seem to matter, not just this purchase but money in general.   
  
"There," Hikaru says, that wide grin breaking across his face as he adjusts the jacket around Pavel's shoulders. "Now you look like the kind of guy who fucked his student."  
  
Pavel is starving, and they eat at an expensive, touristy place near the store, cassoulet for Hikaru and a croque-monsieur for Pavel. Hikaru drinks wine and Pavel drinks water, wanting to sober up, to remember this thing that is definitely not going to last.  
  
"So your mother," Hikaru says, smirking, his spoon hovering over his cassoulet dish. Pavel winces.  
  
"She played the violin," he says. "I played the cello."  
  
"Say no more," Hikaru says, and they both laugh hard, Pavel shaking his head, because he almost doesn't want to believe this, that it might have always been this easy.  
  
They take the Metro to the Jardin des Plantes, the afternoon light that spreads through the city starting to get thicker, Pavel beginning to understand what everyone has always said about Paris, because maybe things like this happen here all the time. Hikaru says that Pavel looks tired, and Pavel nods, letting Hikaru guide him down into the grass on the front lawn, which is dotted with other couples, most of them young, picnics abandoned for kisses and some light groping. It's the start of summer, warm but not hot, and Pavel has never really appreciated the sun as much as he does now, Hikaru leaning over him, still with that smirk.  
  
"I can't believe I'm lying on a fucking lawn in Paris," Pavel says, staring up at Hikaru, who looks down at Pavel like he knows exactly what he's thinking, and Pavel loves that so much, being looked at like he's got nothing to hide anymore.  
  
"It's not just a fucking lawn." Hikaru pushes Pavel's curls from his forehead, the brush of his fingertips making Pavel shiver. "It's a historic, you know. Location."  
  
"Whatever." Pavel beams up at him. "It's grass. I'm lying on it. You're here. I don't care who was here before me."  
  
"You're drunk," Hikaru says, laughing. "I brought you here to sleep it off, you know. You haven't lived until you've fallen asleep in one of these gardens."  
  
"I don't want to sleep," Pavel says, but his eyelids are so heavy. Hikaru leans down to rub his nose against the tip of Pavel's, and they stare deeply into each other's eyes for a moment, jokes lost, time irrelevant.   
  
"Well, I want you to sleep," Hikaru says. "You look so tired."  
  
"You make me feel like a kid," Pavel whispers, already sinking under.  
  
"You are a kid," Hikaru says, and it's true, as powerful as Dorothy saying there is no place like home. Pavel is a kid again, dumb with promise, protected by someone much stronger than he is, asleep with the sun on his face.  
  
He doesn't need to dream, and he's half-conscious of where he is as he naps, the grass tickling against his ear, people shouting with laughter as they pass, the splash of a fountain at the end of the lawn. He can feel the sun on his eyelids, and the closeness of Hikaru, the sound of his breath and the smell of him, which is like the inside of an airplane and like the sky itself, clean and warm.   
  
When Pavel opens his eyes Hikaru is there, propped up on an elbow and staring down at him, his expression calm and soft, like he could watch Pavel sleep for hours.   
  
"I fell asleep," Pavel says, dizzy with contentment, blinking up at him. Hikaru smiles and touches Pavel's face, strokes Pavel's cheek with his thumb.   
  
"It's okay," he says. "I was watching out for you."   
  
Looking back, Pavel finally knows what Hikaru was in this lifetime. It's hindsight, or the way the sunlight glows around him like a halo, or the fact that he didn't have any luggage, or the little gold set of wings on his uniform.   
  
"You can't stay, can you?" Pavel says.  
  
"I have to leave in the morning," Hikaru says. "I've got an eight A.M. flight."  
  
"Okay," Pavel says, his voice shaking.   
  
"Don't be sad," Hikaru says. He kisses Pavel's forehead, then his cheeks, then the tip of his nose. "I'm here now. Do you want to take your jacket off? You're sweating a little."   
  
Pavel nods and sniffles as Hikaru helps him out of the jacket, which spreads out like a blanket under Pavel's body. Pavel clutches at Hikaru and Hikaru leans over him, offering his shadow, still just nuzzling at Pavel's face.  
  
"You're sunburned," Hikaru says.   
  
"I don't care," Pavel says. "Good."  
  
Hikaru laughs and finally presses his lips to Pavel's, giving him a chaste kiss that Pavel deepens, opening Hikaru's lips with his tongue. Pavel's heart is pounding; anyone could see them.   
  
"Don't worry," Hikaru whispers, smiling down at him. "You're not in Kansas anymore. You can kiss me. Nobody here cares."  
  
Pavel knows then that he'll never leave Paris. He'll get a job as a stock boy at an English bookstore and will rent a room over the shop. He'll be broke all the time and he'll feel as if he's twenty years old again. He'll have boyfriends and go for long walks through the city and smoke pot for the first time in his life. He'll write long letters to his kids, and in a few years his daughter, his favorite child, will come to visit him, and she'll throw her arms around him at the airport and sob, hugging him so hard.  
  
He and Hikaru lie there kissing for a long time, like the teenagers who are lying on their blankets around them, touching each other's hair reverently and having muttered conversations about their plans for the evening. In an hour or so they'll get up and walk through the city, looking for a hotel and then for a restaurant, and tonight, with the windows open in their fourth-floor room, Pavel will have Hikaru inside him, will lose a part of himself to it forever, happy to give it up, knowing that when he wakes up in the morning Hikaru will be gone, the little bag with the toothbrush and toothpaste left behind for Pavel.  
  
"You make me want to play the cello again," Pavel says, drunk with happiness as Hikaru kisses his neck. Hikaru laughs.  
  
"But you always hated it -- didn't you? I mean, didn't you just do it for your mother?"   
  
"Yes, but if I played right now I think I would love it, because I would be doing it for you."   
  
"I don't need cello-playing from you, Pavel. You make me happy just the way you are."  
  
"A talentless slob?" Pavel says, grinning, and Hikaru laughs, leaning up to give Pavel's bottom lip an admonishing little bite. Pavel sees the whole universe when Hikaru stares down into his eyes. He sees evidence that everything is going to be okay.   
  
"You're perfect," Hikaru says, and he seems to mean it. "To me."  
  
"You don't even know me," Pavel says.  
  
"Yes, I do."   
  
Pavel believes it, but he doesn't investigate the reason, just kisses Hikaru again. He'll figure it out someday. Right now he has this, and it's better than any explanation he could ever come up with.  
  



	3. Chapter 3

Pavel shows up late for work, which shouldn't be a big deal, considering that she works for her sister. But it is a big deal, and Katya's evil receptionist gives Pavel a dirty look when she comes pushes into the front lobby with her coffee. Pavel ignores her and heads straight to the back. She actually wanted to be on time today, actually cared, maybe for the first time since she started working at Katya's boutique. Pavel's favorite customer has her fitting today.  
  
"If you're going to show up late you could at least get me a coffee, too," Katya says when as Pavel hangs her coat up in the back. Katya is at her sketching table, an expensive antique thing that apparently once belonged to Coco Chanel. Pavel peeks at Katya's drawing, and it's the usual: long lines, a high neck, sleeveless, like most of the stuff in the last collection. Katya is quickly becoming one of the most sought-after wedding dress designers in Manhattan, but Pavel has been bored by her last two showings.   
  
"I thought you stopped drinking coffee," Pavel says, sitting in the windowsill that looks down on the street below. Her sister's boutique has two stories, the bottom mostly for show and reception, and the top for Katya's work space and the finely appointed fitting rooms where customers have their gowns adjusted until they are perfect. Pavel usually hates the fitting process, which is her main job as Katya's assistant, but today she's actually looking forward to it, though she's nervous, too.   
  
"Just give me a sip of yours," Katya says, stretching out her arm, her eyes still on her sketch. "Giving up caffeine has not gone according to plan."  
  
Pavel snorts and passes Katya the cup. Katya is tall and trim and has always been the beautiful sister, as well as the successful one, and she's constantly making vows to drop something from her diet, which seems to be the habit of most beautiful women. Pavel is not beautiful; she's short, a little dumpy, eats whatever she wants and generally doesn't spend much time on her looks, too busy trying to finish up her Master's in Theoretical Physics at NYU to bother getting manicures or eating healthfully. She's got a kind of cuteness that she slides by on, big green eyes and lots of curly blond hair that is always piled messily on top of her head, but she doesn't get much attention from guys. Not that she wants it.  
  
"Isn't the Kimono fitting this morning?" Pavel asks, as if she doesn't know. The Kimono is their nickname for the dress Katya made for Pavel's favorite client, a young Japanese woman whose family seems to be extremely wealthy. Pavel has a theory that mob ties are involved, but Katya just rolls her eyes at this. The bride to be -- Hikaru, of course -- while perfectly poised and quiet with refinement, hides something truly dark underneath all of her carefully applied makeup, Pavel can tell. Hikaru's mother is the same way: dignified but intense, never smiling.   
  
"Yes, the Kimono fitting is this morning," Katya says, putting her pencils away in their fancy little tin, which probably belonged to some other famous designer at some point. Ever since Katya got rich she hasn't deigned to purchase anything that isn't vintage.   
  
"I'll be glad to get it over with," Katya says, standing and tying up her long, straight hair in one fluid motion. Katya and Pavel were both ballerinas as children. Katya was stunning, graceful, accomplished enough to have made a career out of it if she wished. Pavel was hopeless and quit after two years of embarrassment.   
  
"Why will you be glad to get it over with?" Pavel asks. "I love that dress."  
  
"It's not the dress I'm unhappy with. It's the client."  
  
"Hikaru? But she's so nice!"  
  
"Not Hikaru, she's lovely. It's her mother. She's the real client, in case you haven't noticed. If Hikaru has opinions about the dress herself I never get to hear them."  
  
"Maybe she doesn't really want to get married," Pavel says hopefully. She's never met anyone as beautiful and mysterious and generally fascinating as Hikaru, and she hasn't been able to stop thinking about her since Hikaru came in with her mother for her first consultation.   
  
"That's none of our business," Katya says. "I just hope she'll be happy with the dress so I can get her mother out of my life. That woman makes me nervous."  
  
Katya and Pavel walk out into their grandest fitting room, which has been reserved for the Kimono. One of Katya's other assistants has already placed it on a dummy in the center of the room, and it looks perfect under the soft lights, surrounded by tall, gold-framed mirrors. Pavel tries not to stare at herself in the mirrors; she hates being surrounded by them like this. She dressed nicely for today, as if Hikaru will notice that Pavel is wearing her best black pants and a new belted sweater that is supposed to have a slimming affect.  
  
"It's perfect, Kat," Pavel says, returning her attention to the dress as Katya circles it, frowning, her hand on her chin. She's wearing her serious glasses, the ones she puts on when she's sketching or meeting with clients. She doesn't actually need them and the lenses are just glass, but she says the heavy black frames make her feel like a legitimate talent.   
  
"I don't know what she'll say about the draping in the back," Katya says, rearranging it a bit around the dummy. "It's not exactly what she asked for."  
  
"But it's beautiful!" The Kimono is the first dress of Katya's that Pavel has truly appreciated for some time, and not just because of who will wear it. It's really nothing at all like a kimono, but the prim little collar and the delicate pattern of the cream-colored swirls over ivory silk calls to mind the sort of traditional Japanese dress that Hikaru -- well, Hikaru's mother -- wanted for her gown. While the collar and bodice are pure tradition, the skirt is modern, slender, the tulip-petal flap that falls across the front adorned with tiny ivory buttons. Then there are the feathers, which are Pavel's favorite part. They're subtle, tiny and very soft, almost frothy, edging down the back slit of the skirt and thickening toward the hem. Hikaru will look so beautiful in this. Pavel is shaking with anticipation, or maybe from too much coffee.   
  
Hikaru and her mother arrive twenty minutes later and the receptionist brings them up. They both decline her offers for something to drink, as usual. Just seeing Hikaru makes Pavel blush: she's so perfectly put together, wearing boots over tight jeans and a loose gray sweater, her hair back in a neat little ponytail. Her mother is wearing a tailored suit as usual, clutching a very expensive-looking purse. Hikaru carries no purse, which is one of the first things Pavel noticed about her, because Pavel never carries one, either, unless her bag full of school books counts.   
  
"Here it is," Katya says, presenting the Kimono with flourish. Hikaru's mother fishes a tiny pair of glasses from her purse and walks over to the dress, sliding the glasses on to give it a careful inspection.   
  
"What do you think?" Katya asks Hikaru, walking over to hug her shoulders. Hikaru smiles.  
  
"It's beautiful," she says. She seems distant, tired. She always does. Pavel loves that about her.   
  
"What are these -- feathers?" Hikaru's mother asks, leaning down to make a face at them.   
  
"I thought they would give the dress the whimsical, modern look we talked about," Katya says, gliding over to Hikaru's mother. Pavel can hear a tightness in her voice; she hates it when people question her taste. Pavel glances at Hikaru, who is still hanging back a bit.  
  
"Are you ready to try it on?" Pavel asks, feeling like a mallard in a room full of swans.   
  
"Okay," Hikaru says. She sits down on one of the pin-cushion stools near the mirrors and begins unzipping her boots. Pavel hurries to close the fitting room door, already blushing. This is the moment she's been waiting for, if she's honest with herself. Hikaru in her underwear.  
  
"So how long until the wedding?" Pavel asks as Hikaru pulls her boots off.  
  
"It's next month," Hikaru says. She stands and sighs, her bangs falling over her eyes as she reaches down to -- oh, God. She's pulling her sweater off. Pavel's face is melting with heat. She stares, open-mouthed, forgetting all the promises she made to herself to act cool. She has never in her life seen anything as fucking mesmerizing as the sight of Hikaru in a white lace bra and tight jeans.   
  
"Are you excited?" Pavel manages to choke out as Hikaru unzips her jeans.   
  
"I guess." Hikaru steps out of her jeans one leg at a time, and Pavel holds her hands out, stupidly, then folds Hikaru's jeans over her arm when Hikaru hands them to her. They're still warm from Hikaru's body, and Pavel wants to rub them all over her face, but she's too busy oogling Hikaru's matching lace underwear.   
  
"What's the groom's name?" Pavel hears herself ask. In some parallel universe, Katya is tightly explaining to Hikaru's mother that the smooth silk lining on the inside of the dress is just as high in quality as the patterned silk on the outside.  
  
"Saito," Hikaru says. "Well, that's the family name. I'm marrying their oldest son. James." Hikaru crosses her arms over her chest and looks over at Katya, who hurries to get the dress off of the dummy. Pavel knows she should be helping, but she can't move.  
  
"So how did you and James meet?" Pavel asks. She talks a lot when she's nervous.   
  
"Our families," Hikaru says vaguely. She walks over to the raised platform at the center of the mirrors and lifts her arms up so that Katya can carefully lower the dress over her. Pavel wants a million pictures of this moment, wants to wallpaper her room with them. Hikaru's nipples are hard and semi-visible through the lace of her bra, darker than Pavel expected. She's fantasizing so vividly about licking them and pulling them gently through her teeth, the way Hikaru would moan softly, that Katya has to call for her three times before she hears.  
  
"Forgive my sister," Katya says, giving Pavel a look as she hurries over. "She's got her finals this week and she's a little loopy from all the studying."  
  
"Do you go to school in the city?" Hikaru asks, her voice muffled by the dress as Pavel and Katya carefully work it onto her.   
  
"Me?" Pavel says. "Oh -- yes. NYU."  
  
"What are you studying?"  
  
"Don't talk, you'll get lipstick on the inside of the dress!" Hikaru's mother snaps. "Press your lips together!"  
  
Pavel waits for Hikaru to groan and tell her mother to calm down, but she goes silent, and when the dress slides down onto her shoulders as her arms go through the sleeves, she's got her lips pressed very tightly together.  
  
"Physics," Pavel says as Katya smoothes down the skirts of the dress. Pavel is staring at Hikaru's reflection in the mirror, meeting her eyes there. "I'm doing Physics."  
  
"Her master's," Katya says, bragging. "Pavel, fetch me the pins. Well," Katya says to Hikaru, beaming. "What do you think?"  
  
Pavel watches Hikaru's expression in the mirror as she gets the pins from the side table. She doesn't think she'll need them -- the dress seems to fit perfectly, hugging Hikaru's slender body and making her look like a princess.   
  
"It's perfect," Hikaru says. She sounds sad, her hands moving carefully over the patterned silk, the little buttons.   
  
"I think it could use some tightening in the bust area," Hikaru's mother says. "And perhaps at the hips."  
  
Hikaru says something in Japanese, and her mother gives her a look that quiets her.  
  
"So you can diet a bit before the ceremony," Hikaru's mother says in English. "Or hold your breath. I don't want any little baggy places showing in the pictures. Look at this, the silk wrinkles here."  
  
Katya begins to make adjustments and Pavel follows behind her, carefully inserting pins, her heart pounding at the thought that she's putting sharp things near Hikaru's perfect skin. She tries to concentrate, not to think about how good the silk looks over Hikaru's graceful curves, trying not to become dizzy with the smell of her, which is like citrus and spice.   
  
"I think the feathers might be a bit much," Hikaru's mother says as she hovers over Katya, who is working on the hem while Pavel pins the bust.   
  
"I like them," Hikaru says.   
  
"I can just picture Mrs. Saito raising her eyebrow when she sees you wearing feathers down the aisle."  
  
"So can I," Hikaru says, and she smiles a little, faintly, catching Pavel's eye in the mirror. Pavel grins back, and then she sees something that makes her face go white with terror. She's got her hand on Hikaru's breast, practically bracing herself on it while she pins the other side of the bust. She meets Hikaru's eyes in the mirror again and Hikaru gives Pavel a knowing look, her expression otherwise inscrutable.  
  
"Oh, God," Pavel whispers. "Sorry."   
  
"It's okay," Hikaru says, still staring straight ahead, into the mirror. Her faint smile returns, her cheeks going just a bit pink.  
  
Pavel opens her mouth to apologize again, but it just hangs open. Her hand is still cupping Hikaru's breast as she tries to decide if it would be worse to leave it there and feign nonchalance or rip it away with a thousand more apologies. She's never felt so overheated in her life, and the argument Hikaru's mother and Katya are having about the feathers seems as if it's taking place three miles away.  
  
"Do you have any sketches of the dress without the feathers?" Hikaru's mother asks. "I'd just like to see what it looks like without them."  
  
"All my sketches are here," Katya says, walking across the room to get the leather-bound book of sketches that she does for every custom dress she makes, something she gives to the brides as a gift when the dresses are finished. Hikaru's mother follows, and as they resume their discussion about the feathers Pavel sucks in a deep breath and slowly slides her shaking hand from Hikaru's breast down to her hip.  
  
Hikaru shivers, her eyes still locked on Pavel's in the mirror. Pavel kneels down, her legs shaking, and begins to work on the hip area that Hikaru's mother wanted tighter. She looks up again, her heart pounding as she moves her hand back a bit further, toward the perfect little curve of Hikaru's ass. There's no way Hikaru could mistake it for anything but a caress. She's still looking at Pavel in the mirror, still with that little smile. Hikaru's tongue darts out, just barely, to wet her bottom lip, and Pavel barely contains a whimper. She checks over her shoulder and sees Katya and Hikaru's mother still staring at the book, their backs turned. Pavel looks back to Hikaru and sees nothing but permission in her dark eyes. She moves her thumb slightly on Hikaru's hip, rubbing it over the silk, and Hikaru's lips part.  
  
"The whole dress would be unbalanced without the feathers," Katya says, the sharpness in her voice drawing Pavel back to reality. "Trust me."  
  
"Is there any way we could make them less ostentatious?" Hikaru's mother says. "Trim them, perhaps?"  
  
Pavel continues to work on the dress, taking deliberate but subtle detours. She's almost feverish with a flush, and she can feel the heat of Hikaru's skin through the silk, a new humidity. Pavel brushes delicate touches down the length of Hikaru's silk-covered legs, across the smooth flat of her stomach, and just under the little bump of her ass, all under the guise of making her adjustments. Hikaru's breath quickens, and every time Pavel dares to meet Hikaru's eyes in the mirror it's like being struck by lightening, the buzz lingering when she looks back to her work.  
  
"I haven't pricked you, have I?" Pavel asks quietly. Hikaru lets out a low, shaky breath.  
  
"You're doing fine," she says, her voice soft, gaze smoldering against Pavel's. They only look at their reflections, never directly at each other. Pavel is wet from this, very, and she wonders if Hikaru is, too. She feels like she's going to pass out, but she doesn't stop, daring to brush Hikaru's manicured fingers with hers as she stands to check the fit of the sleeves. She almost cries out with terrified joy when Hikaru reaches back to quickly stroke the seam of Pavel's black pants. Pavel looks into the mirror as if to say, _Oh, God, really?_ and Hikaru smiles, telling Pavel, _Yes, yes, yes_.  
  
"Well, it's really Hikaru's decision," Katya says, walking back over to the mirrors. "So what do you think, honey? Do the feathers stay, or do they go?"  
  
"Stay," Hikaru says. She clears her throat. "They stay."  
  
Pavel isn't sure why this is the hottest statement she's ever heard uttered, but it is, and she wants to press her face to the back of Hikaru's neck when she hears it. One strand of dark hair has escaped from Hikaru's ponytail, and Pavel wishes Katya and Hikaru's mother would turn away again so that Pavel could gently tuck it behind Hikaru's ear.   
  
"Does this look better?" Katya asks, and Pavel realizes with alarm that she's actually finished the adjustments. She has a dangerously strong urge to grasp Hikaru's hips and prevent her from leaving.  
  
"Better, yes," Hikaru's mother says. "When will the alterations be completed?"  
  
"You can come back in a week," Katya says, her voice clipped. Normally she would quote at least two weeks, but Pavel knows she wants to get rid of Hikaru's mother sooner rather than later.   
  
"Let's help you get it off, then," Katya says to Hikaru.  
  
Pavel's eyes go to Hikaru's in the mirror. She feels panicked at the thought of watching the dress slide up over Hikaru's head. She would rather stare at Hikaru in this dress for another several hours than see her in her underwear again. To Pavel, Hikaru looks more naked like this, unguarded. Pavel will never touch skin again without wishing that it was covered with silk.   
  
"Pavel!" Katya snaps. She's working the dress off already, Hikaru's arms extended over her head. "Come on!"  
  
It's slow going, and even Hikaru's mother helps, the dress so snug and the pins so close to Hikaru's skin. Hikaru makes a pained noise as Katya is lifting the last of the dress away, a barely audible _mmph!_ that makes Pavel's stomach flip over. When Katya brings the dress back over to the dummy, Pavel looks down and sees the little cut on Hikaru's side, in the tender skin just over her hip bone.  
  
"Oh," Pavel says softly, pressing her thumb over the cut. Hikaru looks at Pavel then, not in the mirror but into Pavel's eyes, and Pavel loses her breath, her thumb still pressed over Hikaru's cut.  
  
"Oh, God!" Hikaru's mother says, moaning. "Is there any blood on the dress?"  
  
Hikaru dresses while her mother and Katya examine the dress, finding no blood. Pavel stands in the middle of the room, a pin cushion in her hand and a tape measure draped around her neck. She doesn't know what to do, where to look. She only just figured out that she's attracted to women a few years ago. Nothing like this has ever happened to her before. She's never touched another girl like that. When no one is looking, Hikaru busy with her boots and the other two back to their argument about the feathers, Pavel puts her thumb in her mouth and sucks, her eyes fluttering shut as she tastes the sharp tang of Hikaru's blood.  
  
"So, we'll be back in a week to try the dress again," Hikaru's mother says, removing an iPhone from her purse and tapping its screen to note the appointment. Pavel glances at Hikaru, who is still flushed, and Hikaru looks back, shyly now, before staring down at her boots. As Katya walks the two of them down the stairs Pavel hurries forward to peer down at the first floor, waiting for Hikaru to give her a secret look, but there's nothing. Hikaru and her mother walk out and Katya turns to give Pavel a very dramatic roll of her eyes.   
  
"Can I just see a sketch without the feathers?" Katya says, imitating Hikaru's mother as she climbs the stairs. "Ugh, God. At least the bride liked them, though maybe she just said so to spite her mother."  
  
"I feel like she barely even knows the man she's marrying," Pavel blurts out, her heart still pounding, breath still coming fast. "Don't you feel that way?"  
  
Katya gives Pavel a disbelieving look, laughing. She pats Pavel's mess of curls as she walks past.  
  
"Right, and her family's in the Japanese mafia, too," Katya says. "Maybe you should be a novelist instead of a physicist, Pasha."  
  
A week later, Pavel shows up for work thirty minutes early for Hikaru's scheduled fitting, wearing the same black pants that Hikaru touched and another new sweater, two pounds lighter because she's been dieting, or anyway not drinking so much soda and coffee. She's breathless when she bustles into Katya's office, handing her a soy pumpkin latte. Katya makes a face at the coffee and takes a sip, wincing.  
  
"Oh, Pavel," she says. "Whipped cream? Are you trying to give me a bus-sized ass or what?"  
  
"So is everything ready for the Kimono fitting?" Pavel asks, practically bouncing on her heels. She's spent the past week daydreaming about having the excuse to touch Hikaru again, how Hikaru will sigh and fold into her arms, telling her mother that she's changed her mind, she can't get married. She'll marry Pavel someday instead, wearing the Kimono, and the sex they'll have, good God, the way Hikaru will moan for Pavel, so wet for her, so needy –  
  
"Oh, they were here yesterday," Katya says, still squinting at her computer, doing her QuickBooks. "Believe it or not, the mother was was actually satisfied. They took the dress and paid."  
  
"What?" Pavel feels like she's been kicked over, like she's on the floor. "But – they were supposed to come in today, it was on the calendar."  
  
"I finished the dress early and asked them if they wanted to come in on Wednesday for the fitting, and they were free. It was a quick one, too, thank God. She tried the dress on and it was perfect. You did a good job with the pinning. Thanks for your help."  
  
Pavel stands there for awhile, her coffee getting cold in her hand. When Katya asks her what's wrong, she doesn't know what to say.  
  
"Honey, you're so stressed about school," Katya says, pulling her serious glasses off. "Listen, when this semester is over, me and you will do a girls only trip. To the Virgin Islands or something. Okay?"  
  
Pavel wishes she was stressed about school. School is the only thing that has ever come easily to her. Math and science and all the things that can be proven, written down, documented, explained. She hates the intangible things in life, hates that she can't think about anything anymore except the way Hikaru's curves felt under that silk, and the way the feathers at the back of the dress ruffled daintily every time Pavel moved, responding to her touch.  
  
She scrolls back through the wedding announcements on the _Times_ ' website until she sees the announcement of Hikaru's wedding to James Saito. On the day of the wedding, Pavel is there, in the back row, on the aisle, unnoticed in a crowd of over four hundred guests.  
  
Pavel watches the bridesmaids move past her in their sleek black cocktail dresses, carrying blood-red roses, looking like mourners at a funeral. And then, finally, on the arm of her father, Hikaru comes.  
  
Hikaru is not wearing the dress Katya made for her. She's wearing a sorry approximation of it, no feathers, a much lighter shade of silk, a clumsier collar. A joyless, bleach-white thing.  
  
Pavel sits through the ceremony, hearing nothing, stunned. The man Hikaru marries is handsome and businesslike, putting the ring on Hikaru's finger like he's baiting a fishing rod. When it's over, Pavel stands with the others to watch the newly married couple walk out together. Hikaru sees Pavel as she and her new husband leave the chapel, and she stumbles, just a little, her husband steadying her as she stares at Pavel, her mouth hanging open. Then they're gone.  
  
Pavel goes to the reception, thinking that maybe Hikaru will wear Katya's dress there, because this is a trend, apparently, a dress for the ceremony and a dress for the reception. Pavel needs to see Hikaru in that dress again, needs it more than anything. She gets drunk before the bride and groom arrive, not sure what she's doing, feeling defeated. She's smart enough to know that she's still young, and that things will only get more disappointing as time goes on.   
  
There's a receiving line, and Pavel stumbles into it, her fifth glass of champagne in her hand. She watches Hikaru as she gets closer to the married couple, studies the way Hikaru smiles and laughs as her friends and relatives grasp her hands, decides Hikaru is a liar who will be horrified when Pavel presents herself, unwanted, a stranger who is obsessed with a moment that will define her miserable life. Pavel almost wants it, Hikaru's dismissal, some proof that there's nothing in this world like what she thought she had for those brief minutes in the fitting room.   
  
Pavel reaches the groom first, and he thanks her for coming, already looking to the next person before he's passed Pavel on to Hikaru, who doesn't betray anything, her expression unchanging as she thanks Pavel, clasping Pavel's hand and releasing it quickly. Pavel wants to linger, to say something, but before she can she realizes that Hikaru has pressed something into her hands. A folded cocktail napkin.  
  
The room tips around Pavel as she walks away, pressing her back to the wall to steady herself. She frowns down at the cocktail napkin, unfolding it slowly. She's almost afraid to look at it, afraid that it will be a note that asks her to leave, tells her that she's crazy, that she should never come near Hikaru again. Pavel feels like a fool as she opens the napkin, for thinking that someone beautiful could want her, for thinking that Hikaru would call off her wedding because Pavel touched her ass. She holds the napkin close to her face in the softly lit room, squinting as she reads the words that she'll reread ten thousand times before she dies, whenever one of her girlfriends annoys her, whenever she wakes from a dream about silk, whenever she knows, without a doubt, that her life is not what it should have been.  
  
 _I would never wear that dress for anyone but you._  
  
~  
  
By the time the ambulance arrives, Pavel is relatively sure that both she and the baby are going to die. She's lying on the floor in Patty Harper's foyer, screaming as waves of pain wrack through her body. Patty is just standing there smoking a cigarette and casting an occasional glance at the movie that's playing at full volume over on the TV. She doesn't even open the door for the paramedics, two young men who come running inside with bags of medical supplies and stare down at Pavel like she's a crime scene.  
  
"Just showed up out of the blue an hour or so ago," Patty says to them as they kneel down around Pavel to check her pulse and shine little flashlights into her eyes. "That's a three mile walk and as you can see she's got no shoes."  
  
"Where are her parents?" the paramedic who is holding Pavel's shoulder asks. He's a handsome young Asian man and his eyes are the first kind thing Pavel has seen since she arrived in this country a year ago.   
  
"Parents?" Patty scoffs. "Back in Russia, I imagine. Or dead. I think he did mention that she was an orphan."  
  
"He -- what exactly -- she's got a black eye."  
  
"Hikaru, I think we have bigger problems right now," the other paramedic says. He's just a bit older, blond, sort of dashing. "Alright, honey," he says, looking down at Pavel with a charming smile that's supposed to calm her, probably. "Has your water broken?"  
  
"She don't speak much English," Patty mutters.   
  
"Da, water broken," Pavel says, nodding rapidly and trying to breathe as another spine-cracking contraction rolls through her. She screams, and Hikaru squeezes her shoulder.   
  
"How long ago, babe?" the blond paramedic asks.  
  
"Jesus, Kirk." Hikaru glares at him. "Don't call her babe."   
  
"Two -- two hours?" Pavel has no idea, really. Time has been relative since she realized she was in labor and begged Jerry to take her to a hospital. He locked her in the bathroom and told her she would have the baby at home like they planned, but Pavel has been making plans of her own, and she'd worked out an escape route months ago. She just wishes she had thought to stow a pair of shoes in the bathroom cabinet, though if Jerry had found them there he would have gotten suspicious. Now, with her feet bleeding and dirty after a three-mile walk through the woods, she thinks it would have been worth the risk.  
  
"We need to get her to the hospital," Hikaru says. "Go get the stretcher."  
  
"I don't know if we have time," Kirk says.   
  
"Yes, hospital, please," Pavel begs, looking from Kirk to Hikaru, who seems so horrified by the state that Pavel is in, his hand still tight on her shoulder. "Please, please."  
  
"She can deliver in the ambulance if she has to, it's better than here on the floor -- go!" Hikaru shouts, and Kirk stands with a sigh, jogging out the door.  
  
"You want me to call up her husband?" Patty asks. "She was begging me not to, but he's got the right to know that she's having the baby, I think."   
  
"No, no, please," Pavel says, the words turning into a wail as another contraction ribs through her, making her sob.   
  
"Shh, shh, it's okay," Hikaru says. He's rubbing her shoulder now, taking her pulse with his other hand, two steady fingers against her sweaty neck. "Did your husband do this?" he asks, touching a bruise over her collarbone.   
  
"Da." Pavel sobs, humiliated, wondering what this man would think of her if he knew that her husband is three times her age and ugly, fat, someone who had to buy a wife. She doubts that Hikaru the paramedic would be so kind and concerned and look at her like she's a crumpled flower if he knew that she's a whore.   
  
"Don't call her husband," Hikaru says to Patty. He lifts Pavel up into his arms, the door crashing open against the stretcher as Kirk pushes it inside. Pavel slumps against Hikaru's chest and shuts her eyes, a tiny seed of hope surfacing in her chest. She's got nowhere to go from here, but maybe her baby won't die.  
  
"Well, alright," Patty says. She takes a drag. "But he ain't gonna be happy with me when he finds out about this."  
  
Hikaru places Pavel on the stretcher and wheels her out of Patty's house, Kirk at the front, guiding the stretcher down over the porch steps. Pavel is so relieved to be in the hands of medical professionals that she fears that she's only hallucinating, dreaming. For the past year she's barely been allowed to see any human being other than Jerry, and hadn't even seen Patty, their closest neighbor, for six months before she came pounding on Patty's door, begging her for help. She'd had a feeling that Jerry was lying when he told Pavel that Patty didn't have a telephone, either. At the moment Pavel feels like this 911 system is like calling God directly for an intervention: moments ago she was helpless on the grimy floor and now she is safely enclosed in the back of an ambulance, sweet Hikaru holding her hand and telling her to breathe, that's she's going to be okay. Kirk is up front, driving, and Pavel trusts the two of them to take care of her more than she's trusted anyone since she was twelve years old, when her mother died.   
  
"How old are you?" Hikaru asks, pushing the sweaty hair from Pavel's forehead.   
  
"Nineteen years," Pavel says, and Hikaru closes his eyes for a moment, as if she's struck him.   
  
"You're from Russia?" he says.  
  
"Da, yes. I come here for husband." There's no sense in trying to hide what she is; they'll find out eventually, when Jerry comes crashing into the hospital in a rage, threatening to sue everyone, as if he's ever even met a lawyer.  
  
"Your husband did this, too?" Hikaru says, placing gentle fingers over the fading bruise at the corner of Pavel's right eye.  
  
"He is bad man." Pavel sobs, another contraction building. "I have no -- other place. No help for me -- ah!"  
  
"It's okay, it's alright," Hikaru says, pressing the cool palm of his hand over her sweltering forehead as she rides the contraction out, trying to breathe the way he told her to. "We'll be at the hospital soon, and they'll give you medicine. Here -- Kirk?"  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"I'm going to start her on Demerol, what do you think?"  
  
"Sounds good to me."  
  
Pavel doesn't know what they're talking about but if it's a drug she's all for it. Jerry wouldn't even let her take aspirin for her headaches before she was pregnant. He doesn't believe in medicine. She since got pregnant her diet has been monitored obsessively, her cravings for salty or sweet things met with only the bland, boiled meat and root vegetables that Jerry eats for every meal.   
  
"Now I'm just going to give you a little shot," Hikaru says, speaking to Pavel as if she's a child, something that she's longed for more than anything for the past seven years. "Here we go." He swabs Pavel's arm and injects her with something, then puts a little band-aid over the puncture mark. "That will start working in just about five minutes," Hikaru says. He reaches down and holds her hand, and Pavel squeezes her fingers around his, giving him a watery smile.  
  
"Thank you," she whispers.   
  
"Is what she said true?" Hikaru asks. "Are you an orphan?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"So there's no -- family who could come and help you?"  
  
"Nyet. No." Pavel was living with her cousin in St. Petersburg before she came to America, but Natalia was selling herself and dying of it well before Pavel left.   
  
"Friends?" Hikaru says doubtfully.   
  
"I see no one but him and that woman."  
  
"Jesus." Hikaru clasps Pavel's hand inside both of his. "It's going to be okay," he says. "You don't have to go back there. We'll get some help for you and your baby."   
  
Pavel's eyes water when she thinks of her baby, and she puts a hand over her stomach. She cried in despair when she found out she was pregnant with Jerry's baby. She hadn't thought it was possible; he often couldn't get hard and usually resorted to doing things to her with cock-shaped objects, almost never ejaculated inside her. She had wanted to lose it at first, but as the baby grew inside her it began to feel like her only friend in the world, and she would talk to it in whispers, sing to it, and pray over it, asking it to be mostly hers, begging it not to come out looking like Jerry. Now she loves this baby, the only family she has, even if the man she hates more than anyone in the world put it in her.   
  
"Can you feel the medicine working?" Hikaru asks. He leans onto the stretcher with his elbow, still holding Pavel's hand. Pavel nods drowsily, smiling. The pain is fading, and this man leaning over her is so handsome, so kind, even if he is only doing his job.   
  
"I did not think it would be like this," Pavel says. "Coming here. Being married. Please -- forgive me." She knows forgive isn't the right word. "Understand," she tries instead, staring to feel loopy. "In Russia, I have nothing."  
  
"It's okay," Hikaru says. He puts his other hand on top of her head. "You don't have to explain. They -- whoever arranged this -- took advantage of you. But you're going to be alright now." He smiles. "I mean it. Do you believe me?"  
  
"I want to," Pavel says, in Russian. She lifts Hikaru's hand up and holds his arm against her chest. She feels as if she knows him, and wonders if it's an effect of the drug. She wants to keep him.   
  
"Do you know what you're going to name the baby?" Hikaru asks. Pavel grins.  
  
"Demerol," she says, and he laughs.  
  
They arrive at the hospital and wheel Pavel inside, Pavel still clinging to Hikaru's hand, still feeling okay because of the drug, though her heart is pounding. She didn't want to have the baby at home because she's had a feeling for a month or so now that something is wrong. The baby still moves inside her, gives her strong kicks and elbow jabs, but something isn't quite right, and if Pavel loses this baby she will truly have nothing, no one.   
  
"We'll take it from here," a nurse in a cranberry-colored scrubs says as Hikaru transfers Pavel from the stretcher to a wheelchair. The nurse kneels down and smiles at Pavel. "I'm Nyota," she says. "We're going to take good care of you, honey, alright?"  
  
Pavel looks up at Hikaru. The other paramedic, Kirk, is already walking off with a grin and a wave.   
  
"Medications?" Nyota says, standing and flipping open a chart she's holding.   
  
"Demerol," Hikaru says. "I --"  
  
"Okay. Thanks, boys."  
  
She starts to wheel Pavel away, and Pavel whines, looking back at Hikaru, who runs forward to grab Nyota's arm.  
  
"Wait," he says. He laughs. "Hang on, I'm coming, too. I'm her husband."   
  
"But -- what?" Nyota frowns down at Hikaru's paramedic uniform. Hikaru meets Pavel's eyes, looking a little terrified, and Pavel smiles gratefully.   
  
"I was on duty when she went into labor," Hikaru says. "Go figure."  
  
"Oh -- okay." Nyota laughs and continues wheeling Pavel, Hikaru walking along with them, his hand on Pavel's shoulder. "So is it a boy or a girl?" Nyota asks, and her cheerful tone makes Pavel's eyes water, because she wants nothing more than to pretend like this forever, that Hikaru is her handsome, loving husband, that this baby is one that they wanted.   
  
"We wanted it to be a surprise," Hikaru says. Pavel of course doesn't know the sex of the baby. She was hoping for a boy, afraid that Jerry would do things to a daughter once she got old enough, but maybe it doesn't matter now, maybe she really has escaped Jerry forever. She puts her hand over Hikaru's and looks up at him, smiling tearfully.   
  
"Everything's going to be okay, sweetheart," Hikaru says. They stop to wait for an elevator and he leans down to kiss the top of Pavel's head.  
  
"How long have you two been married?" Nyota asks, smiling.   
  
"Two years," Hikaru says. "We met in college."  
  
"Oh? And what do you do?" Nyota asks Pavel.  
  
"Computer programmer," Pavel says. Because that's what she always wanted to be.  
  
"Oh, perfect! So you can work from home after the baby comes?"  
  
"Yes," Pavel says, smiling as she's wheeled onto the elevator. As they ride up to the maternity ward Pavel pictures her life in a little apartment with Hikaru, writing her programs while the baby naps, hopping up to throw her arms around Hikaru when he comes home from work with stories of saving lives. She feel as if she's in heaven when they come to the room where she'll deliver the baby, which has a wallpaper border with little yellow ducks and a big window that glows with sunlight.   
  
"Do you think you can climb into bed, mama?" Nyota asks, and Pavel nods, but when she tries to get up she can't make her legs work properly. Hikaru is there to catch her, and he lifts her into his arms again, setting her down carefully on the bed.   
  
"Oh, geez, what happened to your feet?" Nyota asks, frowning at them. Pavel's heart stops: what if the doctors think that her bruises are from Hikaru? Will they arrest him?   
  
"She dropped a plate when her water broke," Hikaru says. "Stepped in the glass, then when we got to the house in the ambulance she ran outside to meet us like she thought we were going to leave without her, didn't even put on her shoes." He grins down at Pavel and tucks her hair behind her ear. "It's been kind of hectic, here at the end. She was in a car accident just a few months ago, got banged up a little, we were terrified about the baby."  
  
"Oh, how scary!" Nyota says. She cleans Pavel's feet with a towel and cold water, and Pavel lets out her breath, squeezing Hikaru's hand in thanks. He's sitting beside her on the bed, letting her lean against his side.   
  
"It's a miracle baby, though," Hikaru says. "Perfectly healthy even after the crash. Which is more than I can say for my other baby." He smiles at Pavel and touches the bruise at the corner of her eye tenderly. Pavel is melted against him, staring up at him in awe. She's starting to believe his stories herself.   
  
Nyota leaves to get the doctor and Hikaru lets out a powerful breath, bringing a shaking hand to his face to rub at his eyes.   
  
"Jesus," he says. "I don't know what's wrong with me. I'm sorry. I just didn't want to leave you."  
  
"Thank you, thank you," Pavel whispers, burrowing against Hikaru's chest. "Please stay, stay here."   
  
"You don't think I'm crazy?" Hikaru asks, wrapping an arm around Pavel's shoulders. "Telling people I'm your husband? Lying about those bruises -- oh, God, what if this hurts your case against your real husband?"  
  
"He is not real husband," Pavel says, clutching at Hikaru.   
  
"He's not? You're not legally married?"  
  
"Yes, legal, green card, all of that, but he is not real for me. It is like nightmare."  
  
"Oh, I see." Hikaru sighs and rubs Pavel's arm. "I just -- I don't know what's happening. I feel like we're both going to get in trouble. But you need -- and I just want to help you."  
  
"Yes, help me, yes," Pavel whispers, starting to feel sleepy.   
  
"You can take a little nap," Hikaru says, kicking his legs up onto the bed. He stretches out and Pavel rolls against him, sighing. Even if she only gets to live in this fantasy until the baby comes, she'll always be glad for these brief moments when she got to feel like she had a normal life, a good husband, a real love.  
  
"You must have gone through hell," Hikaru says. He rubs Pavel's back, and Pavel closes her eyes, breathing in the smell of him, which is like band-aids and soap. She drifts off to sleep against him, and wakes with a moan as she begins to feel the contractions again, not as intense as before but still there, a hint of sensation breaking through the painkiller haze. She lifts her head and Hikaru looks down at her with concern. He's so frightened for her, so full of real sympathy. Her eyes water when she thinks about all the time she spent feeling so hopeless, starving and shivering in Russia and enslaved in America. Hikaru was somewhere in the world all along, and if they had just crossed paths he would have taken care of her, saved her.  
  
"Are you okay?" Hikaru asks, his voice soft, and Pavel is still drugged enough to act without thinking, so she kisses him, just once and quickly, dry on his lips.  
  
"I am okay," she says, smiling. Hikaru makes a little noise under his breath, _mmph_ , like Pavel has punched him in the stomach.  
  
"You want to hear something really terrible?" Hikaru whispers.   
  
" _Da_ , okay." She's ready for anything as long as he's here.  
  
"I think I wanted to help you so badly, at first, before I knew -- just because you're so pretty."   
  
Pavel feels like a plate that has been shattered on the floor. It hurts to be reminded that she's pretty. That she's gone to waste. She thought that her looks would earn her a particularly good husband when she submitted her video to Your Russian Bride, that the company would save her for the best, most worthy customer. She thought that saving her virginity for her American husband would be similarly advantageous. Natalia and the woman who ran the agency begged her not to do this, and Pavel didn't understand why until she arrived in America. It would have been easier, what she had to do, if she had already been jaded.   
  
"Don't cry," Hikaru whispers, and Pavel shakes her head, hiding her face against his neck. She can feel the pound of his pulse, and this only makes her cry harder.  
  
"Everything alright in here?" a man asks as he walks in. He's wearing blue scrubs and has a stethoscope looped around his neck. Nyota follows him into the room, holding Pavel's chart.   
  
"We're alright, just emotional," Hikaru says.   
  
"Your first child?" the doctor asks, and Hikaru and Pavel both nod.   
  
"I'm Dr. McCoy," the man says. He shakes Hikaru's hand. McCoy seems a bit intense, but he has an air of authority that Pavel appreciates. "Let's have a look and see how things are progressing," McCoy says, coming around to the other side of the bed. Hikaru slides off the bed, still holding Pavel's hand tightly as McCoy examines her.   
  
"Nyota, what's she dilated at?" McCoy asks, frowning, his big hands on Pavel's stomach.   
  
"Eight -- no, nine," Nyota says.  
  
"Okay. Well," McCoy cracks his knuckles. "The baby's breech. No time to turn it -- we'll have to do a C-section. Nyota, get the anesthesiologist and book us a room in surgery."  
  
"Yes, doctor."   
  
"What -- what is happening?" Pavel asks, her heart pounding. "What is this word, breech?"  
  
"It just means your baby is turned around," Dr. McCoy says. "Feet first instead of head first. Nothing serious, except that it means we'll have to do a C-section instead of a normal delivery."  
  
"It'll be alright," Hikaru says, hugging Pavel to him as Pavel hyperventilates. "It's a really common thing, don't worry."   
  
"Your baby will be just fine," McCoy says. "But we've got to get you -- where is the goddamn anesthesiologist?"  
  
"I am here, Doctor," a slim, pale man in a turtleneck and a lab coat says as he slides into the room, giving McCoy a look of subtle hatred.   
  
"Pavel, this is Dr. Spock," McCoy says. "He'll be putting you to sleep."  
  
"To sleep?" Pavel looks at Hikaru desperately. She doesn't like this. She doesn't want to go into a surgery room alone. "My husband," she says, clutching at Hikaru's arm.   
  
"He can come," McCoy says. "We'll get him a mask and some scrubs."  
  
"You needn't actually sleep, if you would prefer a spinal block," Spock says, staring at Pavel as if she should know exactly what he's talking about.  
  
"What is this?" Pavel asks, looking to Hikaru.   
  
"You could be awake while they perform the surgery," Hikaru says. "You wouldn't feel anything, and they'll put up a little curtain so you don't have to see. But then, you know, when the baby is out, you can be right there to see it."   
  
"I want this," Pavel says, nodding rapidly. "I don't want to sleep."  
  
"A wise choice," Spock says, preparing his equipment. "Most mothers express a preference for this method after experiencing both versions."  
  
Pavel turns to look at Hikaru, overwhelmed, and Hikaru is smiling a little, his eyebrow raised, as if he finds Spock entertaining. Pavel smiles, too, squeezing Hikaru's hand.  
  
"You'll be with me?" she says.  
  
"I'll be with you," Hikaru says, nodding.  
  
It feels like exchanging marriage vows, like what Pavel hoped for when she flew to America to meet her destiny. She knew she was insane to hope for anything good, that Your Russian Bride was just a last resort before full-out street walking and she should have prepared herself for grave disappointment, but she still tried to hold on to the feeling that there might be something good for her here. She'd lost all hope by the time Hikaru came along, but here she is, holding his hand, surrounded by doctors and nurses who seem to belong to a world completely different from the one she was imprisoned in for over a year.   
  
The surgery is routine, and Pavel would be disturbed by the smell of burning skin as McCoy slices her open, but she's been through worse, has been sliced open without Hikaru at her side to whisper that she's doing so well, being so brave. When she hears her baby's first screaming cry she sobs, knowing that it's a girl before McCoy announces this. He brings Pavel's wet, wailing daughter to Pavel's chest, and Pavel closes her arms around her, crying almost as hard as her baby, Hikaru laughing in disbelief, his face pressed to Pavel's.   
  
"Little Demerol," Hikaru says, beaming as Pavel kisses her daughter's red cheeks.   
  
"Demora, maybe," Pavel says. "Would be better."  
  
"Was the father, um, an Asian dude?" Hikaru asks, speaking close to Pavel's ear when the doctors are preoccupied, closing Pavel back up. Pavel strokes Demora's little head as her cries soften. She has black hair and dark eyes, like Hikaru.  
  
"Yes," she says, though Jerry is blond and doughy, of vaguely Nordic descent. It doesn't matter. Pavel knew, in some deep, secret place, that Jerry couldn't have gotten her pregnant. This is Hikaru's baby. The miracle baby, like he said.  
  
"She's beautiful," Hikaru says, sniffling. "Jesus."  
  
The doctors take Demora away to clean her and Pavel feels itchy with the separation, though she trusts these people completely, feels as if they are friends or even family as they smile at her and tell her that her baby is healthy.   
  
"Congrats, Daddy!" Nyota says to Hikaru, slapping his back, and Hikaru laughs, looking down at Pavel as if to apologize. Pavel shakes her head. She knows she'll never be able to explain it to Hikaru, that he wouldn't believe it; she can barely believe it herself. But Demora has Hikaru's eyes. She's his, somehow. She always has been.   
  
"I must have known you in a past life," Pavel says in Russian when the three of them are huddled up in bed together in Pavel's recovery room, Hikaru's head on Pavel's shoulder as they both gaze down at Demora, who is bundled in a pink blanket, sleeping in Pavel's arms.   
  
"You're teaching her Russian already?" Hikaru says, grinning. He looks tired. Pavel wonders if he's blowing off a shift to be here with her, but she doesn't dare ask about when he'll need to leave.  
  
"I was saying this to you," Pavel says to Hikaru. "I don't know how to say in English."  
  
"Well, can you give me the gist of it?" Hikaru asks.   
  
"What is this, gist?"  
  
Hikaru laughs. "Just like, summarize."  
  
Pavel sighs, smiling down at Demora as she sleeps, her little pink hands curled under her chin. She's not sure that she's even communicating this feeling properly in Russian, really.   
  
"It feels true," Pavel says, turning to look into Hikaru's eyes. "Things you said to them."   
  
"I know," Hikaru says. "I -- I don't want that guy who hurt you anywhere near you or your baby again – I, shit, I don't know. I want to write my name on the birth certificate." He laughs, but Pavel nods, grasping his wrist.  
  
"Da, we do this, yes!"  
  
"Pavel, we can't --"  
  
"Yes! Yes, we can do this, yes."   
  
Hikaru moans and sits up a little, running his fingers through his hair.   
  
"Look," he says.  
  
Pavel hugs Demora to her, waiting to be told that Hikaru must leave, that he's come as far as he can in helping her. She thinks of Jerry, maybe already on his way here, how he will ruin all of this, destroy the fragile magic of this moment before it solidifies. He'll take one look at Demora and turn her into a mutant child who has his mean eyes.   
  
"I've been thinking," Hikaru says. His breath is coming faster now. "I have this friend in Maine. We could go there."  
  
"Yes, yes, we will go!" Pavel's voice breaks with joy, tears pooling in her eyes, and Demora twitches and whimpers in her arms as if to cast her vote as well.   
  
"I know it's crazy," Hikaru says. "But I feel like I have to protect you."   
  
"Yes, da, I need this."   
  
"I know you do," Hikaru says, breathless as he leans forward to hold Pavel's face in his hands, wiping her tears away with his thumbs as he presses soft kisses against her lips. "I know you do," he says again, whispering now.  
  
Hikaru is on the phone for most of the night, talking to his sister who works for the FBI, his friend who lives in Maine, and Kirk, who apparently covered for him at work. Nurses come in periodically to check on Pavel and Demora, who is asleep on Pavel's chest. Pavel smiles at the nurses sleepily as they take her blood pressure and check her iron levels, and Demora wails when they prod her. Pavel dozes and wakes to nurse Demora when she cries. At dawn Pavel opens her eyes and finds Hikaru fast asleep in bed beside her, his cell phone closed in his hand, mouth open on Pavel's pillow. Pavel kisses Demora's head and then Hikaru's. She knows she should be afraid, but Hikaru is here, and she's fearless beside him, even when he's soft like this, fast asleep.  
  
"Wake up, husband," Pavel whispers when a nurse brings breakfast. Hikaru blinks awake and Pavel scratches her short fingernails over his back as he sits up, moaning. They attempt to eat the hospital food, but Hikaru shakes his head and tells Pavel he'll get her something better. She's nervous when he's gone, twitching every time someone walks past the door of her room, but when he returns with a McDonalds bag and flowers from the hospital gift shop she beams in gratitude.   
  
"McDonalds was favorite to me in Russia," she says, happily unwrapping greasy breakfast biscuits and hashbrowns while Hikaru holds Demora. "Very best, yummy." She almost cries when she takes her first bite. Jerry didn't believe in cooking with salt or oil.  
  
Pavel takes a shower in the attached bathroom, feeling weak and tired but so happy that she trembles, twice dropping the shampoo. She'll have a scar on her sagging stomach and her breasts are achingly heavy, leaking constantly. She wants to look good for Hikaru despite this, and she takes some time combing the tangles out of her long hair and blowing it out as straight as she can get it. She doesn't have any clean clothes, so she comes out of the bathroom wearing a fresh hospital gown, barefoot and holding the paper flaps around her back. Hikaru looks up from Demora and Pavel blushes, feeling ridiculous.  
  
"C'mere," Hikaru says softly. Pavel walks to him, exhausted just from the effort of holding the little wall-mounted blow dryer. She slides into the bed beside Hikaru and wraps around his shoulder, breathing in the scent of him as she reaches down to stroke Demora's cheek with one finger.   
  
"God, look at you," Hikaru says, and it takes Pavel a moment to realize that he's talking about her, not the baby. She looks down at herself, confused. Hikaru reaches over and touches Pavel's leg shyly, just under her knee. She shaved in the shower, and it felt so good, the effort of making herself look nice finally worth something. Hikaru is blushing when she looks up at him.  
  
"What's wrong?" she asks.   
  
"Nothing." He laughs at himself, blushing harder. "Your legs."  
  
They smile at each other, a low heat that Pavel hasn't felt for a long time pooling in her stomach. She puts her head on Hikaru's shoulder and hums under her breath, Demora listening intently, looking back and forth from Pavel to Hikaru.  
  
"Someone's going to come here to interview us today," Hikaru says.   
  
"Interview us?" Pavel keeps humming.   
  
"Yeah. Somebody from the FBI. I talked to my sister -- they're investigating that service, Your Russian Bride."  
  
Pavel looks up with alarm and Demora lets out an ornery cry in complaint.   
  
"It's okay," Hikaru says. He wraps his arm around Pavel's shoulders. "They're going to help us. They're putting you and Demora in the witness protection program."  
  
"What -- what is this program?" Pavel is shaking, afraid that the FBI will send her and Demora back to Russia, and that Jerry will find them there.   
  
"They're going to take care of you, change your name," Hikaru says.   
  
"But -- what --"  
  
"And I'll come with you," he says. "We'll be together, and the FBI will help us hide. You can testify against your husband -- ex-husband, one of my other sisters is a lawyer, she'll help you get a divorce --"  
  
"Hikaru, I --" Pavel is trembling, and Demora is crying in earnest now, probably wanting a meal. "Can we not run away? Can we do that, yes? Please?"  
  
"Not if we want to have any kind of normal life. Pavel, trust me, this is good, it's really good."   
  
Pavel is nervous, but she does trust Hikaru. She takes Demora and quiets her with a feeding while Hikaru makes more phone calls. Pavel's heart is beating fast at the thought of testifying, the FBI, divorce. She wanted to leave it all behind her and never look back. She sighs and looks at Hikaru, who is leaning against the wall by the window, propped there on his elbow while he talks on the phone. Pavel feels like she knows everything about him. She can picture his one-bedroom apartment, clean but not spotless, can imagine the faded t-shirts folded in his drawers, a little recycling bin for his beer and soda bottles, a basketball gathering dust in the corner of his bedroom. She can imagine him laughing with his friends at a bar after work, meeting his sisters for lunch in his paramedic uniform, watching television alone at night in flannel pants and an old shirt from college. Her eyes get wet as she tries to envision the details of his life. She should have been there, always. The stories they told the nurses and the doctors should be true.   
  
Things happen so quickly that Pavel's thoughts and feelings like butterflies that she chases desperately with a net. She can't keep up, just stumbles around behind them, out of breath. Hikaru tells the nurses he's going home to get his wife's things and returns with a portable life for Pavel in a leather bag: shirts and underwear, skirts and pants, a little travel toothbrush and toothpaste, deodorant, hair ties, chapstick, shoes that look like ballet slippers.   
  
"My sister helped me get all this stuff," Hikaru says as Pavel pulls her new things from the bag, chewing her lip to keep from weeping with gratitude like a fool. There are things for Demora, too: soft pink rompers and tiny fleece hats with funny ears on them, more blankets, a car seat, and a little stuffed giraffe.   
  
Pavel is introduced to an endless stream of people: Hikaru's sisters, people from the FBI, a counselor who works at the hospital, breast feeding technicians, a Russian woman who is pregnant with twins who Nyota thought Pavel might like to talk to. Her name is Tanya and Pavel is sobbing by the end of their four hour conversation, hugging her and promising to write.  
  
For weeks, life is crazy and exhausting, between the trip to Maine to crash in Hikaru's friend Scotty's apartment while the witness relocation plans are finalized, Demora's constant needs and the endless questions and phone calls from FBI agents. When Pavel does get ten or fifteen minutes to sleep she quite literally passes out, half-conscious of bits of conversations and developments: Jerry arrested, human trafficking, federal case. It's like a lullaby that plays in the background as Pavel naps, a fairy tale story with a dark beginning and a happy ending. Every time she wakes it's to Demora's little cries or Hikaru's hand stroking through her hair, asking her if she wants anything to eat.  
  
The first moment when she begins to feel normal is just after they've found out the location of the safe house that the FBI is providing, a ranch-style three-bedroom down in Vermont. Hikaru's sister tells them that it's lovely, retro, that there are glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling of the room that will be the nursery. Pavel smiles, thanks her, and walks out onto the small balcony that looks out on the bluish gloom of Bangor, needing some air, overwhelmed. The air is icy, reminding her of home, and her eyes sting as she thinks about her mother.  
  
"Are you cold?" Hikaru asks, slipping out onto the porch behind her, and before Pavel can answer he's draped his fleece jacket around her shoulders. Pavel smiles and threads her arms into the sleeves, which are still warm from his body.  
  
"Thank you," she says, her voice shaking, because those words will never be enough. "Is Demora still asleep?"  
  
"Yeah." Hikaru grins and steps closer, his hand shaking as he touches Pavel's cheek. They've been so busy and so constantly in the company of others that they've barely had time for even a few stolen kisses. "How much do I love you for naming your daughter after Demerol?" he says, laughing.   
  
"You love me," Pavel says, as if this is news. She's known for some time now. Hikaru brings her McDonalds french fries and organic vegetables, brushes her hair for her when she's too tired to move, and sleeps with his knees tucked in behind hers, like a little boy, like he needs the comfort, too.  
  
"I've waited for you," Hikaru says, his voice wavering a little. He holds Pavel's face with his two gentle hands and puts the tip of his nose against hers, staring all the way into her, unblinking. "For so long."  
  
Pavel nods, hypnotized by his sincerity. She feels like all of her life has been spent waiting, too. She puts her hands on Hikaru's waist and leans up to kiss him, soft and timid at first, then harder, deeper once she's tasted him, once he's moaned just a little under his breath. They sigh against each other's lips as their eyes flutter open, and Pavel laughs, rubbing her face against his.  
  
"When I was little girl, my mother, she tells me this story," Pavel says. "A girl, she is lost in snow. Freezing, starving. No hope. Along comes bear. Girl thinks, here is another thing to kill me. But bear, he is kind. Cares for girl, keeps her warm. In spring, bear becomes true self, handsome man who loves girl. This is popular story. In Russia, I wait for this bear to come. Too cold, too long, so I give up, come here. And here is bear, American bear."  
  
"Hoping I'll turn into a handsome man in the spring?" Hikaru says, grinning. Pavel moans and throws her arms around his shoulders, squeezing him tightly.  
  
"You are this when I find you," she says. "Lucky, I do not have to spend long months with bear."  
  
They stay out on the porch for a few minutes more, kissing and swaying in a rhythmless slow dance, whispering plans for the future against each other's lips. Pavel can see this future as invisible but insistent fingers pull him from the warmth of the memory: the house in Vermont, weekend mornings spent in bed with Demora, making her giggle until her little cheeks turn pink, Hikaru's return to school to become a doctor, his sisters braiding Pavel's hair before the wedding, Pavel crying over the keyboard of her very own computer one afternoon, remembering the expensive minutes she wasted on dial-up machines at the internet cafe in Russia. They have two more babies, a birdbath in the backyard, fights about the piling-up laundry, and quiet sex after the children are asleep, Hikaru shuddering and arching up into Pavel when she calls him _husband_ in Russian, whispering. Pavel teaches herself how to program and becomes obsessed with open source operating systems, prompting Hikaru to jokingly call her a full-blooded communist. They take the children to Disney World and their youngest son is terrified of the 3-D movies. They drink wine late at night and watch television, Hikaru with his head on Pavel's stomach as she strokes his hair. Hikaru opens his own family practice, and Pavel does the books. Demora plays the cello, and sometimes, when she's practicing after dinner, Pavel cries while she does the dishes, listening. It reminds her of her mother, that music, the unapologetic sadness.  
  
They buy Christmas trees and school supplies and Girl Scout cookies, and Pavel tries to hang on to these memories, to claw his way back, to stay, but he's pulled onward.


	4. Chapter 4

The lives pass before him much more quickly after that, as if a prophecy has finally been fulfilled and the rest will come more easily. He and Hikaru get better and better at finding and keeping each other, and as their souls grow old together they sometimes spend whole lifetimes happy just to be great friends, partners in business or in crime, but more often they have a moment of weakness, a good, hard fuck that reunites them in a way that they can't ignore.   
  
Pavel trips along through their lives, part of him trying to linger out of curiosity, another part wanting to move on to the next, also out of curiosity. He can sense his corporal body becoming tired, hungry, the potion he drank speeding up its process: he's a junkie who Hikaru arrests and falls in love with, a long lifetime of trying to stay sober for Hikaru flashing by like a punch to his gut, then he's a married man who gets Hikaru, his research assistant, pregnant, then they're freshman roommates at an engineering school, sharing one of the room's single beds by the end of their first week of classes, Hikaru naked and sitting up in bed beside Pavel, eating ramen noodles from a red plastic cup. Pavel lingers there, this Hikaru reminding him so much of his own, and he rubs his hand over Hikaru's bare back, tears gathering in his eyes.  
  
"What's wrong?" Hikaru asks, looking down at Pavel. He sets the noodles aside and pulls Pavel into his arms, and in this young body Pavel still can't believe he's lucky enough to feel Hikaru's warm, bare skin pressed to his under sex-scented blankets.   
  
"I had a dream that we broke up," Pavel says. "You were mad because I didn't want to go on a hike with you. Or something."  
  
"Sorry I was mean to you in your dream," Hikaru says, kissing Pavel's face. Pavel laughs at Hikaru's ramen-noodle breath and makes the mistake of shutting his eyes when Hikaru presses kisses over them. It's enough to allow the potion to yank him into the next life, where there's first contact with the Klingons, a bad war. Pavel and Hikaru are both doctors, and when their medical station is attacked, Hikaru finds Pavel amid the chaos and takes him by the arms as the building crumbles around them.   
  
"I've loved you since basic training," Hikaru says, his eyes glittering with tears. "I should have told you, I should have –"  
  
"I did, too, me too," Pavel blurts frantically, and he has to wonder if Hikaru heard him over the blast that takes the rest of the building down.   
  
The universe changes after that. Pavel spends lifetimes longing for Hikaru, because he died young or because there's no time for secret meetings and no private places where they can whisper to each other. By the time the Federation has established a peace, Pavel has lost Hikaru again. In most of his lives he pours all of his energy into work, and is often considered a genius. He usually dies young and unmarried.  
  
When the potion brings Pavel to the life he lived just before the one he's living now, he knows it's the last memory he'll have, because it's the clearest, as real to him as a memory of his childhood. He's back on BWR-098, the day the sun finally died. The evacuation was a disaster. The plans that were made when the planet was colonized only accounted for the evacuation of the original settlers, not for their children, and the bots would only allow the parents onto the escape shuttles. Screaming and fighting the bots, parents were herded onto the shuttles and taken away, telling their freezing children that they would send help, that it would be okay.   
  
Pavel was asleep in bed when the evacuation alarms sounded, and he's wearing only his pajamas, socks and slippers, the last of the heat fading from the platform where he and the other children were left as they watched the escape shuttles fly away. That was hours ago, and though he is only nine years old, Pavel knows enough about travel through space to understand that a rescue mission won't make it here before he and the other children who are standing on the platform freeze to death. No one fully understood BWR-098's sun; that's clear now. An event like this is unprecedented in human experience. There was no stellar explosion, and the sun's death was not gradual. It just went out, like someone came to repossess it. It's just gone.  
  
The shuttle platform is enclosed, but not entirely, and the air is like freezing water, needling the children who remain. Pavel is leaning against the back of a cement staircase that leads up to the surface. He's hugging himself with his arms, but it does no good. Some of the smaller children have already gone quiet. Closest to him is a boy about his age with black hair. Hikaru. Pavel would see him in the halls at school sometimes. He once heard Hikaru bragging to another boy in the replicator line that his father was going to teach him how to fight with a sword.   
  
He glances over at Hikaru, who looks stunned. He's wearing his father's coat, which hangs around him like a tent. His father threw it to him desperately as the shuttle doors closed, as if a coat would keep his son warm enough to save him.   
  
Pavel thinks about the looks on his parents' faces as the bots shoved them into the shuttles. The way they fought in vain to get back to him. He thinks of how they'll mourn him, have a funeral, and then, years later, another child.   
  
"Here."  
  
Pavel looks up, and Hikaru is standing in front of him, his teeth chattering as he unbuttons his father's coat. It's black, heavy, and Pavel can't believe the warmth of Hikaru's body inside it when Hikaru wraps the flaps around Pavel's back, fastening the buttons again. Pavel shuts his eyes and buries his face against Hikaru's chest, where his heart is pounding. He knows the shock of the new warmth will fade quickly, but for a moment he feels like the sun has come back. He winds his arms around Hikaru's skinny waist and holds on tight.  
  
"It's okay," Hikaru says softly, and though it isn't, Pavel doesn't argue. He just whines with gratitude when Hikaru opens both of his hands over Pavel's head, trying to keep him warm there, too.   
  
Eventually, they lose their strength and have to sit down with their backs to the cement stairs. Pavel is curled entirely inside the coat, his knees tucked to Hikaru's chest, face hidden against Hikaru's neck. The heat is long gone from the coat and from both of their bodies, but they stay locked together, shivering, clutching at each other when they hear cries from the other side of the platform.   
  
"Did you ever learn how to fight with a sword?" Pavel whispers when Hikaru's heartbeat starts to slow.  
  
"Not yet," Hikaru says. Like he still thinks it's going to happen someday. Pavel pinches his eyes shut tight inside the dark of the coat and tries to imagine it: Hikaru growing up strong and walking around with a sword strapped to his back. Vanquishing enemies. Defending Pavel from bullies. Teaching Pavel to use a sword, too, maybe, and being surprised and impressed when one day it's Pavel who saves him.   
  
This time, Pavel gets to die first.  
  
~  
  
Pavel wakes up with a gasp, tears pouring down his cheeks, his nose running. He blinks rapidly as his vision refocuses, and he's in the smoky little hut again, his mouth dry, the sun setting outside. He tries to stand and falls down again.  
  
"Be careful, relax for a moment!" the alien woman says, waving her hands at him. "Coming out of the trance takes time! You should rest until your ghosts begin to fade."  
  
"I – I – that –" Pavel's voice is raw with disuse. "How long have I been out?" he asks, trying again to stand and only managing to get up on his hands and knees, his stomach pitching.   
  
"Just for six hours or so," the alien says. "Longer than most sessions, yes, but I told you, you have many ghosts! And now we know why, such a simple solution. Trying to find another ghost – best way to hold on to your own."  
  
"I have to go," Pavel says, crawling toward the door. He pulls himself up against the wall of the hut, his whole body wracked with tremors. "I have to – see Hikaru, I have to –" He chokes out a sob, feeling insanely disoriented, not sure what to do with this, how to even begin to believe it. When he was in the trance he was sure it was all real, and he still feels it in his bones, though his rational mind is already fighting it.  
  
"Go, then, and do what you need to do," the alien says. "In a few hours you won't remember any of it."  
  
"What – no." Pavel shakes his head. "I'll never forget it."  
  
"Ah, but you must! You can't live with all of these ghosts, no, no, it would make you – I think the word in Standard is crazy?"  
  
Pavel feels crazy as he runs from the hut through the streets of the village, faster than he's ever run in any of his lives, making people gasp and jump out of the way. Well, maybe he has run faster than this, but only once, when Hikaru was falling.  
  
He barrels into the lobby of the hotel, breathless, heart pounding, and thinks about running up the stairs rather than waiting for the elevator, but Hikaru is there in the lobby, talking to Kirk and McCoy, all three of them frowning with concern. When they turn to see Pavel running at them, Kirk laughs with relief, McCoy groans and throws up his hands, and Hikaru looks at Pavel like he's been stabbed.  
  
"Where –" Hikaru says, cut off there by the force of Pavel quite literally jumping onto him, his arms around Hikaru's shoulders and his legs locking around his waist, making Hikaru stumble backward and Kirk laugh harder.   
  
"What's wrong, what happened?" Hikaru asks, holding Pavel to him, kissing his temple. "What happened – oh, God, Pavel, are you hurt? I looked everywhere –"  
  
"Hikaru, Hikaru." Pavel just sobs, unable able to say anything else. His Hikaru, who he's lost so many times, who he's spent whole lifetimes glimpsing only briefly across crowded rooms, who took him and saved him and kept him warm when he could.   
  
"Jesus, something happened," Hikaru says, and this stops Kirk's laughter. "He's shaking really hard."  
  
"I am okay," Pavel sobs out. "Okay, okay, just, just –"  
  
"Where were you, Checkers?" Kirk asks, touching his back. "What happened? Why are you crying, buddy?"  
  
"Hand him over," McCoy says with another irritated groan. "I'll examine him."   
  
"No," Hikaru and Pavel say in unison, clinging to each other.  
  
"Let me take him up to the room and talk to him," Hikaru says. "He doesn't look hurt – you're not hurt, are you?"  
  
"No," Pavel says, sniffling and rubbing his face against Hikaru's neck, listening to the strong pound of his pulse. "Oh, Hikaru, Hikaru."  
  
"I think he might be high," Kirk says, cheerful with this diagnosis, and Pavel laughs.   
  
" _Da_ , high is all, had an alien drink," Pavel says.  
  
"That can be just as dangerous as a broken bone, kid," McCoy says. "More so, usually."   
  
"I am fine, I promise," Pavel says, trying to collect himself, wiping at his face as he unwinds his legs from Hikaru's waist, slumping against him and standing shakily.   
  
"Alright, take him upstairs and give me a call if there are any developments," McCoy says. "And for God's sake, don't have sex. I can't tell you how many male pregnancies following fun times on alien drugs I've had to deal with since I came to space."  
  
"Why are looking at me when you say that?" Kirk asks.   
  
Hikaru and Pavel go up to their room, Pavel clutching at Hikaru on the way there, gazing at him with a groggy smile, feeling as if he really is high. Hikaru frowns down at him with concern, kissing his forehead.  
  
"I was so fucking worried, you have no idea," Hikaru says when they're back in their room, Hikaru sitting on the bed and Pavel in Hikaru's lap, wrapped around him again. Pavel smiles at the blazing sunset that he can see through the room's window, glad even to see a sun again.  
  
"Hikaru, the most amazing thing happened to me," Pavel says, sitting back to look at him, still snug in his lap, Hikaru's hands steady against the small of Pavel's back. Hikaru really does look wrecked with worry, even now that Pavel has returned, and Pavel kisses him hard for it, moaning into his mouth.  
  
"God, what has gotten into you?" Hikaru asks. He hugs his arm around Pavel's waist and reaches up to wipe Pavel's face dry with his other hand. "I thought – you were so mad at me –"  
  
"A stupid fight, it doesn't matter. Hikaru, this alien, she said I could see my past lives, and I saw them, and you were there, and we had a daughter and you were going to marry into the Japanese mafia and there was a story about a bear –"  
  
"Okay." Hikaru laughs. "I can hear your stomach growling. I think we should get some real food on your stomach so you can come down from this – whatever this is. What did this alien give you, exactly?"  
  
"A – a drink, it had herbs, I don't know – but Hikaru, it was true, all of it, I felt it, it wasn't a dream, it was memories –"  
  
"Pavel, calm down, Jesus, your heart is pounding." Hikaru kisses Pavel's nose and tries to set him down on the bed, but Pavel won't let go, burying his face against Hikaru's neck again, breathing in the smell of him, so Hikaru just sighs and scoots over, reaching for the phone to order room service.  
  
As the sun disappears outside, Pavel kisses Hikaru, still wrapped around him, Hikaru leaning back against the headboard, his hands roaming over Pavel's back as they both begin to get hard. Pavel keeps crying, can't stop, and Hikaru keeps whispering that it's okay, everything's okay now.  
  
"Don't drink mysterious alien substances, please," Hikaru says. "I don't – I won't survive, okay, if anything happens to you. All day I felt like I was being eaten alive from the inside out, and you were only gone for seven hours."   
  
"I drank it because I was mad at you," Pavel says. "But I am not mad anymore, oh, Hikaru, I will never be mad again."  
  
"I'd like to have that in writing."   
  
Pavel knows that it's not true; already the details of his past lives are fading. Someday he'll look back on this and feel certain that it was all just a hallucination – a story about a bear that his mother told him when he was a child, his stupid dreams of having Hikaru's baby, the cold he's always been surrounded by, in Russia and in space, and Hikaru always the solution to it, his way to keep warm.   
  
Room service arrives and Pavel eats like a pig, feeling as if he's been starving for weeks. Afterward he takes a shower, washing away the scent of incense from that hut. Hikaru joins him, and they linger under the hot water for a long time, washing each other and necking lazily, rubbing their erections together.   
  
"We can't have sex, remember," Hikaru warns when Pavel reaches down to stroke him.  
  
"I don't care if I get space pregnant," Pavel says, and Hikaru laughs. "Anyway, I know that I won't. That potion she gave me, it did exactly what it was supposed to do. It showed me how lucky I am to have found you. How short a time we have together, how we should not waste a moment."  
  
"I'm sorry about that hike," Hikaru says. "I really didn't mean for it to be like that, I just kept seeing all these interesting species –"  
  
"It's okay, Hikaru. I'm sorry I was so impatient. Mostly I was wanting to have sex with you, and you were more interested in plants."  
  
"Only because I didn't know about this whole sex side quest," Hikaru says, squeezing Pavel's ass. "I thought we were just hiking."  
  
"I brought a blanket and the lubricant and everything!"   
  
"Aww, Pavel." Hikaru kisses him, pressing him against the shower wall and framing Pavel's head with his arms as they both grow harder, breathless. "You should have told me."   
  
"I'll tell you now, how is that?" Pavel says, rutting against Hikaru's hip. "Fuck me, Hikaru. I need you inside me – _oh_."   
  
They move to the bed, still wet from the shower, and Pavel opens his legs around Hikaru's body, staring up at him and thinking, deliriously, that Hikaru should always be soaking wet. They're careful with each other, slow, worshipful, and when Pavel comes he calls Hikaru _husband_ , speaking Russian. _Yes, yes, oh, husband, I've missed you_.  
  


**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Heart of Life](https://archiveofourown.org/works/818672) by [echoinautumn (maybetwice)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybetwice/pseuds/echoinautumn)




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